Sustainable façade sealing with an eye on the social aspect

The renovated West Betuwe City Hall is a textbook example of sustainable and circular construction, in which the demolition hammer was not haphazardly wielded. When tendering, the city council also expressed the desire to use local subcontractors as much as possible. Hermeta is one of them and has given a special interpretation of the façade sealing with sustainable Schüco systems as well as an eye for the social aspect.

The latter may also have been one of the reasons that Hermeta was identified as a preferred supplier for this project by the municipal government itself, no less. "We are based in Asperen, located in the municipality of West Betuwe, and in 2020 we won the All-in employer award with the central theme of 'open for inclusion,'" said Wim Kok of Hermeta. "We are an important employer in this region and have also been cooperating with Syndion, an organization for people with physical and/or mental disabilities, for almost 15 years now. They even have their own workspace in our building where they work under supervision on parts of our projects, among other things. Themes that are particularly important to the municipality of West Betuwe. Partly because of this, we were involved at an early stage in the planning of the renovated town hall, where we even got a small part commissioned directly by the municipality."

Proven curtain wall system

The West Betuwe City Hall has been preserved, modernized and expanded. In the context of sustainability and circularity, the starting point was to reuse as much as possible. Thus, the existing building was largely preserved and redesigned for a seamless connection to the transparent extension, the pavilion. "To make the existing building more sustainable, we installed just under 300 m2 of new double solar control glazing in the existing facades," says Wim. "With the new building, especially the pavilion, the challenge was mainly in making the transparent design feasible. Politics must be transparent, and the architect took that quite literally. The curtain wall even extends into the council chamber. Given the large glass dimensions and the high weight of the triple glass, we deliberately chose the FWS 60 curtain wall system from Schüco. It is a reliable and sound system with which we have had good experiences from the past. The slim aluminum profiles of only 60 mm in view hardly stand out against the sturdy laminated wooden posts."

Extra clear glass

The Schüco curtain wall system is also barely noticeable from the outside. The pavilion catches the eye because of the floor-to-ceiling extra clear triple glass from glass supplier vandaglas. "Glass sheets of 1.80 meters wide by 5.40 meters high are really substantial," Wim emphasizes. "They are brought on special trestles with special transport. It was up to us to then assemble them just-in-time, because the trestles returned with the same truck. And caution was needed during assembly, because the windows are not common and are custom-made. Normally we have a certain risk of breakage, but here it was reduced to zero. You can trust us with that too. We've been around for some time." And that's another understatement, because last June Hermeta celebrated its 100th anniversary. "During the festivities, the management promised to focus even more on sustainability. For example, we purchased a battery container so that, in combination with a large number of solar panels on the roof, we are now self-sufficient for 90%. But what we also understand by sustainability is that we have an eye for the social aspect: people and their environment. We continue to invest heavily in that as well."