Chamberlayne Road, London

The large-format Proteus shingles have been used with a Tecu Gold finish which will weather softly on City View, a Bellway Homes (North London) mixed-use, mixed-tenure development that curves on plan around the corner of Chamberlayne Road (voted the hippest street in Europe by Vogue magazine in 2009) and Kensal Rise in the London borough of Brent.

Designed to elevate urban apartment living to a new level, the redevelopment of a brownfield site features roof terraces, rarely-found three-bedroomed apartments and coveted basement parking around two cores. The rear of the development forms a podium slab over the basement car park and ground-floor accommodation to provide amenity space for the residents.

Constructed of reinforced concrete frame with external Metsec walling to carry the copper gold Proteus shingle rainscreen cladding, the site sits adjacent to a railway line and is exposed to high ambient noise levels, resulting in the carefully detailed façade to satisfy planning legislation.

The planning application report read: “There is no doubt the building will be a completely new approach to architecture within the borough. It is considered that, as a whole, the innovative and some would say contentious building will create an individual and striking landmark.”

Proteus shingles are a more traditional form of cladding that is increasingly being used within contemporary architecture to bring texture as well as fast-track and economic solutions to façade design. Fabricated as relatively thin single-skin interlocking panels, they enable complicated geometries and curved surfaces particularly when smaller tile sizes are used.

Available in square, rectangular and diamond shapes, all the usual edge-processing techniques such as bevelling, folding and bending are factory finished to ensure the corners of buildings and connections to other envelope elements such as windows and doors are completely weatherproof.