Specialist Resins Bring Kelvin Hall Back to Life

Glasgow’s Kelvin Hall is a well-known building that has had a rich and varied lifetime, having been home to some of the city’s most exciting events, concerts and exhibitions.

In 2014, Glasgow City Council, Glasgow Life, the University of Glasgow and the National Library of Scotland formed a partnership to transform the historic venue into an exciting new centre of cultural excellence that would showcase collections, engage in teaching and research as well as provide a health and fitness centre. With such a demanding client brief and the physical constraints of a listed building, the project’s architects worked with the best stakeholder groups and partners to deliver a design solution that would maximise the building’s potential. In order to provide a high strength screed that could cope with the stresses of heavy foot traffic, Flowcrete UK supplied 1,750m2 of heavy duty Isocrete K-Screed to create a robust floor build-up for the main reception. Proprietary additives were incorporated within the screed material, producing an earlier drying time and ensuring that the flooring project was completed in a faster timescale than a traditional screed system would allow. To achieve a visually appealing floor finish, 1,600m2 of the seamless resin terrazzo system Mondéco Mirrazzo was applied over three floors in the main reception, café, corridors and transitional areas in a light silvery grey colour that matched the structure’s natural interior design scheme. The resin element for the ground floor main corridor included 65m of Mondéco coving to a height of 400mm. Mondéco Mirrazzo was then applied to the feature wall in the reception area to a height of 2.2m. In selected areas, an asymmetrical two-tone effect was achieved by applying a darker shade of grey along one side of the corridor that blended seamlessly up the wall. Light-reflective aggregates within Mondéco Mirrazzo convey a luxurious appearance.

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