Selfridges - Birmingham

background -

Selfridges is the ultimate 21st century shopping experience with a stylish mix of products ranging from furniture, fashion and food to art, beauty and sports. The company has opened a new state-of-the-art £40 million retail store in Birmingham’s newly renovated £500 million, 110,000m2 Bullring development. The building has a futuristic curved shape covered with 16,000 spun aluminium discs.

the challenge -

Future Systems wanted to create a monolithic, waterproof and insulating skin for the steel framed building.

the solution -

A bespoke Liquid Plastics system was specially created to form the distinctive external façade of the new store. A 1mm coating of Decadex was applied over sprayed concrete. The Decadex coating was reinforced around the attachment points for the aluminium discs and insulation was adhered to the surface using Flexcrete PU Sealant. A 10mm thick coat of Wallfort Render and Scrim was applied before the finish was completed with a 1.5mm application of Monolastex Smooth coating in an electric blue colour specially matched to an Yves Klein painting. The shimmering silver discs were applied over Monolastex Smooth to give the impression that the discs are floating on the blue surface.

the benefits -

The complete system is guaranteed waterproof, and Liquid Plastics has also enabled Selfridges to create a structure that is so distinctive it doesn’t even need the name on the building. The store has already been hailed as one of the world’s most exciting architectural designs.