Lucas creates an innovative solution for signature City of London development

Lucas is always proud to go the extra mile for clients and create innovative solutions to issues that arise during the construction process.

Walbrook Square is one of the most significant and highest quality City of London developments for many years. The Foster + Partners design requires curved bulkhead cladding panels to finish off each storey inside an amazing eight level internal atrium, and where the centrepiece is a stunning spiral walkway rising up through the atrium from the ground to level eight.

The cladding needed to provide a metallic graphite finish but to install and maintain a metal cladding would have been prohibitive in this setting. The Lucas team developed a modified glass reinforced gypsum (GRG) substrate and is spray applying a Perlata finish from Muralplast’s ArmourColor range. This is a specially developed water-based coating formulated with crushed pearl particles that will provide the correct appearance specified by the design.

We are fabricating the cladding off site, each piece is uniquely coded, sprayed in our spray booth and we will deliver them to site on a just-in-time basis. They are light enough to be set in place like pieces of a jigsaw and can be safely worked on site for the perfect finish.

Lucas has already completed a number of important packages at Walbrook Square for Sir Robert McAlpine including back and front of house painting packages and the complete installation of basement toilets, showers and changing rooms.

The Walbrook Square development close by Canon Street station consists of two high-grade specification office buildings as well as retail units on the ground floor and a new entrance to Bank underground station. There will be a public thoroughfare between the north and south buildings and a permanent, public exhibition of the Temple of Mithras first uncovered on the site in the 1950s. The main building is due for completion in Autumn 2017.