Walthamstow Blues

A 13-storey hotel next to Walthamstow Central Station, London, has been completed, clad with Nordic Blue Living copper from Aurubis Architectural alongside black brickwork.

Located on a prominent town centre site, the 107-bedroom hotel forms a key part of a mixed-use scheme that will also provide new homes, retail space and a landscaped public realm. The £20 million scheme has been developed by Solum Regeneration, a partnership between Network Rail and Kier Property, and will help revitalise this area of the town centre, creating a new urban gateway.

Designed by Rolfe-Judd Architects, the hotel tower is conceived as a series of vertical articulated masses, differentiated by facades clad either in black brick or Nordic Blue Living 1 copper. Nordic Blue is a factory-applied patina developed with properties and colours based on the same brochantite mineralogy found in natural patinas all over the world. In marine climates, the natural copper patina contains some copper chloride giving it more of a blue colour and this is emulated with Nordic Blue using 100 % brochantite.

Another range, Nordic Green, is produced with a hint of iron sulphate yellow, replicating the natural green. With both ranges, the process can be accurately controlled so that, as well as the solid blue or green patina colours, other intensities of patina flecks can be created revealing some of the dark oxidised background material, as with the Nordic Blue Living 1 here.

The material is easily bent and formed, and there are no limitations on the length of pre-patinated copper sheet or strip because whole coils are treated on the production line, not just limited size sheets. This enabled the vertical long-strip cladding, as used at Walthamstow broken up by horizontal bands at floor levels.

Other Aurubis Architectural copper surfaces include Nordic Standard ‘mill finish’, as well as Nordic Brown pre-oxidised copper giving either light or dark brown oxidisation that otherwise takes time to develop in the environment. Copper alloys are also available for architectural applications, such as Nordic Bronze and Nordic Brass – which is now also available pre-weathered – and the innovative Nordic Royal, an alloy with a long-lasting golden colour.

Aurubis Architectural is part of the world’s leading integrated copper group and largest copper recycler. For more information, visit: www.aurubis.com/finland/architectural or email: g.bell@aurubis.com