The era of modernism is the period of high and glazed offices. The cities are suddenly filled with glazed giants with simple form, which has not been seen before on such a big scale. More abstract designs began to appear in the European landscape at the beginning of the 21st century. The examples are London 30 St Mary Axe, Turning Torso in Malmö or DC Tower 1 in Vienna. These buildings refer to modernism, however, they are treated as the icons of glazed architecture thanks to their characteristic geometry and interesting settings of façade fillings.
The realization of such untypical designs has involved great amount of time and work so far. Additionally, the process of performing façade did not exclude mistakes and necessity of repetitions, which then resulted in extension of time for realization of a given investment. Fortunately, technology development has enabled changes in this area within the course of years. The reliability at the stage of both design and realization of layers in 3D structure is provided with, for instance, digital platform by Schüco, which enables transfer of the full data key from design of aluminum parametric façade directly into its production.
Parametric Façade System by Schüco was called "4.0 revolution" in design of layers. It allows for easier performance of subtle solids of complicated structure on industrial scale. Architect can concentrate exclusively on an aesthetic and functional form during working on a project of façade, whereas the program conducts technical surveys on performance of façade and assesses its physical and constructional features on an ongoing basis.
It is possible thanks to the library of “intelligent” BIM models, which constitute plugins to Revit and Rhino/Grasshopper programs. The ready elements can be joined in nearly any modules and constructions, modified by transculent or non-transculent fillings or completed by, for instance, installations of photovoltaic modules. Particular modules can be parameterized individually or globally – within the scale of the entire model of 3D façade. Data is introduced to the offering and calculation programs at the further stage. The program sums up production costs and eventual changes in design, thus economic effectiveness of every undertaking can be monitored at all stages.
The so called “closed data circuit” is provided during the process of design and realization of the façade. Complicated technical pictures are then replaced with complete 3D models of façades. Each of the elements has an individually assigned CNC code of production machine, thanks to which there is no necessity of manual programming of processings. Thus, the risk of making a mistake at the production stage is minimalized almost to zero. The data circuit is also transferred on the construction site. Each produced component of the façade has its unique indication which informs general contractors how a given construction should be mounted.