Hi, as
I promised I have been reviewing the Atlantic Ocean in search of an island
where starting to build. My first stop was in Quebec, in the islands of the
Madeleine, they are twelve in total even though only eight are inhabited... I
have lots of space to build a beautiful construction!! They have a climate
quite soft and... the best are the beaches!, I will like to return there.
Today,
with your permission, I am going to make a small literary experiment, as the
great writers, such as, for example, Gabriel
García Márquez in his famous book "The general in his Labyrinth"
whose main character, as you know, is Simón Bolívar. What I propose to is
to recount in third person as I discovered the greatness of the following
material in my list, the aluminium. You judge by you same if is fiction or
reality what I describe below:
Meeting
at the airport (seventh stop)
For Rodolfo have to wait,
is not an option and, if it were not for the importance of the appointment,
perhaps he already had gone to perform other tasks. When their private plane
landed in the Cannes-Mandelieu airport, specifically in the hangar 16, he could
not imagine how much that he was going to like this experience. The hangar had been designed by the
architecture group Comte and Vollenweider
which, with a budget of only 15 million of eur, had built this marvel of
concrete, wood, glass and aluminum. The total area of the hangar is 3.486 square
meters and the offices included in it have 920 of the same unit, in total 4.406
square meters of construction and 6,000 of aeronautical surface.
Rodolfo had travelled
in March of the same year at the fair of the wine of Mandelieu - La Napoule but
he had not come through the airport, he had used the sailboat of a good friend
of French, so he did not know the building, is true that the authorities had invited
him to the inauguration, but he did not attended to not overshadow the mayors
of the two cities (Cannes and Mandelieu). While the traders were arriving to
the meeting, Rodolfo thought that the use of wood in structure was a good idea,
it was making triangular lattices with laminated beams supported in solid wood.
But, at its criterion, the star of the work was certainly the singular weft
consisting of glass and aluminium.
The
Weft of Aluminium
When the three traders
arrived to the airport (high positions in their companies, two women and a man)
Rodolfo knew that the supplier of
aluminium profiles was Kawneer,
who had also worked in the technical advice that needed this facade, it
consisting of triangles and pyramids of glass (diamond points). He realized right
away that the solution was basic and complex at the same time: Basic because it
was a classic curtain wall (light facade that transmits its load and the thrust
of the wind to the adjacent structure) and complex because it has 403 pyramids
of triangular base and 403 flat triangles.
The three executives
explained their ideas for the business that they had between hands, and Rodolfo
listened with patience, but he did not can "to remove the eye" to
modular boxes with form of triangle. This had needed six months of work,
meetings between the parties, of discipline, of exchange of ideas and much
collaboration to devise the operation of the façade (his own meeting seemed it
a joke in comparation). But the result
was impeccable, the divisions are easily interchangeable if required, the
solution enables perfectly the dilatation of each member and the connecting
elements are not visible, this makes that the surface look is of glass. The
project is perfectly integrated in the landscape of the lower Valley of the
river Siagne.
Aluminium
Aluminium is one of the
most abundant materials of the Earth, it has many applications: in construction,
packaging, transport or decoration. The main advantages are lightness,
strength, plasticity and versatility.
This material is
extremely malleable; this is a great advantage because with a little effort can
be created the most incredible shapes (paper, artistic figures, aluminium
profiles most common in the construction...). Another curious advantage is that aluminium will oxidize more quickly
than iron, this is an advantage because the oxide layer that forms on the
aluminium is transparent and very tough and this prevents that the material can
oxidize.
But the most
interesting is that the aluminium is a material that, by their qualities, has
still defiance for reaching.
I now conclude the experiment of today, but not before
you explain that executives were stunned when I showed them my ideas, of
course. Bye bye
