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Keileweg 26, 3029 BT Rotterdam
studio@vanta-architecture.com
010 307 41 88

Core, structure and curtain wall, engineered as one. The part of the tower you touch and the part that holds it up, designed in the same room with the engineers and makers we have built with for years.

What this is.

Above eighty metres, structure and façade stop being separate trades. The core sizing decides the lettable plan; the outrigger decides where the winter garden can be; the curtain wall module decides every interior wall for forty floors. We lead that integration ourselves rather than refereeing it from a distance.

We work in long partnerships with structural and façade engineers, and we prototype early: mock-ups at one-to-one, visual and performance, before tender. A tower's façade is drawn once and paid for four thousand times. The discipline of the repeating bay is where the budget and the beauty are both decided.

What landson the table.

  • Structural scheme

    Core, floor system and stability concept sized with the engineer, including the honest metres they cost.

  • Façade design & tender package

    The bay elevations, details and performance specs a curtain-wall contractor can price without guessing.

  • Mock-up programme

    Visual and performance mock-ups reviewed at one-to-one (glass, joints, night appearance) before anything is ordered.

  • Wind & comfort studies

    Tunnel and CFD rounds for street-level comfort and crown accelerations, folded back into the design, not filed.

What clientsask first.

Do you replace the structural engineer?

Never. We make their work earlier and more architectural. The engineer sizes the structure; we make sure the structure lands where the architecture wants to be strong.

Why insist on physical mock-ups?

Because glass lies in renders. Reflectance, coating colour and joint shadows only tell the truth outdoors at full size. And a mock-up costs a fraction of re-cladding one floor, let alone forty.

Can you take over a tower already in design?

Yes. We are regularly brought in at tender stage to rescue a façade from value engineering: keeping the cost cuts, losing the visible ones.

Need only this stage? That is how a lot of our work starts.

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