nhow Amsterdam | Huge anodization project

With its 650 rooms on 25 floors, the four-star nhow Amsterdam RAI hotel will be the largest newly built hotel in the Benelux. The 'triangular' design of the 91-meter-high hotel tower is inspired by the 1960s advertising column on the forecourt of the RAI complex. Special attention is paid to the vertical articulation in the facade, composed of no less than 4,000 (!) natural anodized fin profiles, alternately matte and polished.

In the new RAI hotel, modern art, design, gastronomy and culture go hand in hand, according to the client. The design is by world-renowned Dutch architectural firm OMA, also responsible for De Rotterdam. The hotel is a new social and multicultural meeting point for business travelers, tourists and Amsterdam residents and blessed with special facilities such as a television studio, a sky bar, a gallery, a sculpture garden and a spa. Already in the preliminary project, Alucol was approached by facade builder Rollecate to achieve optimizations in the so-called fin profiles that emphasize the vertical articulation in the facade

Huge anodized surface

The fin profiles are of enormous size, says Ramon van Dongen of Alucol. "The profile has a circumference of almost 900 millimeters. Two pieces are linked together each time to form the intended facade appearance. It results in a large V-element. The total anodization surface is as much as 37,000 m². Because of that size, we carefully mapped out the logistical flows in the preliminary phase. We handled the entire anodizing process for Rollecate, including polishing, which was outsourced to a regular partner. So optimizing the internal logistics to the pretreatment company (polishing) and vice versa (weekly requirements, volume flows, etc.) was also an important item in the overall project." The new hotel is located next to the RAI complex in the triangle between the Europa Boulevard, the A10 and the RAI. "Due to its location right on the highway, an anodization layer was chosen in a thickness of 25 um, 5 um more than standardly prescribed for facade construction in the Netherlands." The new nhow Amsterdam RAI will open its doors in the first quarter of 2020.