Cladding general

• Cladding is the skin of the building that is not directly charged with
carrying the buildings gravity loads, but does transfer wind load to the
structure.

• Cladding is most often found on buildings framed with columns, but

also shows up on some bearing wall structures.

• Cladding is usually the element architects use to protect what lies

beneath and within, against rain, snow, wind and sometimes fire.

Primary reasons to clad

• Protection
– Of structural elements from
• Weathering / corrosion
• Fire
– Of interior spaces from
• Water
• Temperature extremes (heat gain - heat loss)
• Air infiltration
• Visual intrusion

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 Secondary reasons to clad
• Facilitate
– Exterior maintenance
• Window washing
• Sealant replacement
• Window replacement
• Aesthetic Quality
– Refine the unrefined
(Barcelona)
– Un-define perimeter
(Diller&Scofido)

Cladding materials
Limestone 3”x3’x5’ $29.00/s.f.
Marble 2” $79.00/s.f.
Granite 2 1/2” $62.00/s.f.
Hokie Stone $30.50/s.f.
Glazed Curtain wall 1” insul glass, average $55.50/s.f.
above average quality $132.00/s.f.
Translucent insul panel 1-9/16” thick $32.50/s.f.
Insul Aluminum panel Anodized finish $12.45/s.f.
Terra Cotta dry set $7.65/s.f.
Brick $16.15/s.f.
Concrete masonry Ground face veneer $9.20/s.f.
Split face veneer $7.80/s.f.
Glazed face $11.70/s.f.
Precast Concrete 8’x16’x4” $17.35/s.f.
Glass Block 8”x8” $23.50/s.f.

R.S. Means 2005

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How many layers are there?
The air barrier layer
The water layer
The privacy layer
Shading layer

Insulation layer

How close or far apart

should the layers be?
The air barrier layerThe air barrier layer
The water layer The water layer
The privacy layer The privacy layer
Shading layer Shading layer

Insulation layer Insulation layer

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 Minimum &
maximum
• Mies compressed the layers into a
single thickness of glass… 1/4
inch. Farnsworth House

• Renzo Piano maximizes the

spacing between the layers,
working to develop an architectural
integrity for each layer.Cy Twombly Gallery

It often requires many

parts to assemble a clad
wall, but essentially there
is
• structure to transfer
cladding loads to the
structural frame
• adjustment, to
compensate for the high
precision of the cladding,
lower precision of the
structure, and the
movement between the
two
• seals to close off one
floor from the other
(firestop) and to close the
inside from the outside
• thermal mediation to
compensate for the
additional heating and
cooling loads found at the
perimeter of the building.

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• Cite Internationale de Lyon 1995

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Tie back

Support

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 Terra Cotta Rainscreen in
Paris (IRCAM Extension)

Square
frame

Assemble
frame Square
frame
Set Tiles

Set Anchors

Keeping water out

• Three primary strategies are used to keep water out
of the cladding wall.
– Face sealing
– Labyrinth-like joints
– Rain screen

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 Face Sealing
• The idea of face sealing (sealing water out at the face
of the building) is simple
– Apply high performance sealants at all joints in the
cladding and water will be kept out.
– This might require miles and miles of perfectly
executed sealant joints… something our walk
about showed was not too easy to do

Labyrinth-like joints
• This manufacturer of
insulated metal panels
uses a horizontal panel
joint that would require
water to move uphill to
get past the joint… after
the sealant joint was
defeated.

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 Water runs uphill
• Rain pelts the side of
the building
• A film of high pressure
water forms on the
building
face…searching for a
path in… it finds an
open sealant joint only
to encounter
• The upturned hooked
end of the joint keeps
water from getting past
…and into the building.

Which is better? Why?

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 Stopping water with air
• Face sealing
works to keep
water out of
cladding with
chemistry
• Labyrinth like
joints work to
keep water out
mechanically
• Both of these
can be backed
up with air

It’s all about pressure

• As the wind blows
against a building, it
piles up on the
windward side
creating zones of
higher air pressure
• On the calm side
(lee side) there is
lower pressure.
• The building’s
mechanical system
tries to keep a static
pressure

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 High pressure pushes, low
pressure pulls
• The higher air
pressure on the
windward side
actually pushes
water into any open
joint it can find
• This combined with
the inertia of wind-
borne rain can
literally drive water
through a cladding
wall!

Equal pressure removes the

• If we could equalize
push
the pressure on
both sides of the
cladding, the loss of
a pressure
differential would
remove the push
from the water.

• If we could also
remove the inertia
from the wind driven
rain, we could keep
this wall dry!

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 Enter the rain screen
• The rain screen is very much
like the airspace behind a
brick veneer wall. The only
difference is these vent
spaces we make behind the
cladding are divided into
chambers designed to be
small enough to equalize
pressure very rapidly to
respond to gusts and wind
direction changes.

Small chambers at edges

The pressure equalization
chambers are formed by sealing the
cladding to the air tight barrier
(sheathing) behind the cladding.

These chambers must be small

where pressure gradients are close
together (at edges and roof top) and
can be larger in the center of the
clad wall.

The airtight barrier is the key - it

must be really airtight - .02 cu/ft/min
to make the rain screen work.

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 Small chambers=rapid
equalization (fewer leaks!)
The smaller the chamber, the faster
it equalizes - the larger the
chamber, the slower it equalizes.

While waiting to equalize - water is

driven into the wall!

The cladding must do it’s part to

resist flexing (which reduces or
increases the pressure equalization
chamber volume)

For additional reading: Progressive Architecture, August 1990

- “The Rain Screen Wall” p 47 - 51

Stick system
• Easy to ship - doesn’t take up
much space
• Fabricated / assembled on site -
on site labor
• Can adapt to variations in
structural frame
• Doesn’t need much staging /
storage space.

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Seagrams sticks

Tower Building
Many cladding systems use mullions
spanning from floor to floor to transfer
wind loads from glass and metal
panels into the building structure.

These mullions can be visible or

hidden, or as seen here, a
combination of both.

• Mitchell Giurgola 1975

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We’ll look at two walls on the tower building, the flat wall made up of glass and
metal panels, and the sunshade wall made up of glass and curved metal
sunshade panels

The mullions are

in the same
position relative
to the columns in
both walls, but
the sunshade
wall’s cladding
pushes out
beyond the
mullion to make
shade.

A steel angle or bent plate is

often the connector between
the cladding and the
structure

A steel plate is welded to the

floor angle.

The mullion bolts to this

plate through slotted holes
for adjustment

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 Horizontal aluminum
extrusions are bolted
to the vertical mullion,
the metal panels will
clip to this extrusion

The metal panels have a

slotted clip attached to the
back of the panel, the slot
fits over the horizontal
extrusion or retaining angle
bolted to the vertical mullion.

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Birkerts Sticks

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Metal Cladding

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 To clad or not to clad… what
is the question?

• Mies has used both clad and unclad columns

over his career. The column from the German
Pavillion in Barcelona (left) is clad with chrome
steel while the later column at the Farnsworth
house is unclad…Why?

Cladding to
Structure…minimal
correspondence
• It isn’t pre-ordained that
cladding closely map the
structural elements.
• Gustav Eiffel’s structure for
Bartoldi’s Statue of Liberty
is conceived completely in
service of the sculpture’s
form… the structure exists
for the cladding.

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Spiderwebs
between
• When strucure and surface
separate, a dense
spiderweb of secondary
structure usually
intervenes, mediates
between the skin and
structure.

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• In these approaches, the cladding - skin comes first, structure is
“reverse engineered” from the cladding.

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 Ductwork cladding
• QVTR

An architecture of cladding?

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 Panel system
• Uses off-site labor to pre-
assemble panels
• Usually requires custom tooling/
formwork - most expensive
• Rapid on-site installation of
large scale panels
• Used with metal, precast, gfrc
panels
• Requires large on-site staging /
storage space
• Needs high degree of precision
from structural frame
• Fewer joints to “lose” error

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 Unit System
• Uses off-site assembly (higher
precision possible)
• Requires on site staging /
storage space to stockpile units
for installation
• Usually crane-set
• Needs a higher precision
structural frame - fewer places
to visually “lose” error

Unit & Mullion

• Not used so much today.
• Needs both on and off-site labor
• Middle ground between unit and
stick system

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 Column cover and spandrel
• Usually found with precast
concrete cladding
• Can be used with prefabricated
stone strategies
• Spandrel must be capable of
spanning between columns
• Requires higher degree of
frame precision - fewer
adjustment points
• Fewer places to visually “lose”
error.
• Requires on-site storage /
staging for large parts or J.I.T.
strategy for delivery.

Concrete cladding

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 Engineering addition
• Spandrel
panels
span from
column
cover to
column
cover

Eng.
Addition
• Only two
panels can
be shipped
per truck -
requiring off-
site storage
space for
loaded
trailers

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