Cladding: Skylights, Façades and Other Building Envelopes

Cladding is more than just a protective skin on the exterior of a building. With the right design and construction, it can add a breathtaking architectural element to a structure. For instance, glass cladding not only lets the outdoors in but can do so in striking ways that are far from predictable. Opaque, textured or clear features on a wall or ceiling can infuse a space with nature, art, or both.

The Manuel Gómez-Morin Cultural Center (Mexico)

Looking Up

Skylights are widely used to admit steady, even light into industrial, commercial, or institutional buildings. Installations range from purely functional daylighting for energy efficiency to elaborate aesthetic forms with breathtaking design.

Cladding can be tinted or transparent, even for an unconventional shape. Geometrica's structural system frames free-forms with lightweight, corrosion-resistant galvanized steel or aluminum tubes that are connected via patented aluminum hubs. Strong in both tension and compression, the structure can be shaped into combinations of curvature and inverse curvature within a single gridshell.

For glass cladding, Geometrica’s exclusive GL-48 system allows structures to be clad in a three-way pattern. This glass system allows for multiple options when it comes to appearance, as the light follows the function. The modular layout may vary with the structural behavior, or to express geometric patterns, such as lamella, lace, geodesic, or daisy.

Our GL-48 glass system has a hierarchical gutter arrangement for redundant protection against water seepage or interior moisture. Structural seals prevent infiltration. Condensate gutters in all the skylight mullions capture and carry moisture to primary gutters. These primary gutters are uninterrupted from the water break to the edge.

Art in Architecture

Many design softwares enable architects to create free-flowing forms for landmark buildings. And, Geometrica provides the most notable and cost effective structural solution to bring a free-flowing form into reality.

Often the complex curvature of a structure is likened to art and described with nuanced monikers such as “anticlastic,” “minimal,” “inverse curvature,” and “hyperbolic parabola.” It may be more difficult to remember those names than to actually build – and clad – these structures with the Geometrica system.

Geometrica helps solve the most "impossible" design challenges.

San Juan Church: a heavenly skylight in Monterrey, Mexico

Internal and external surfaces of buildings, shopping centers, houses of worship, libraries, museums and community centers can be designed to follow unpredictable forms. These unpredictable forms often become cultural icons. An entire building may be so beautifully unpredictable that the entire structure is ultimately considered a work of art.

Enticing Envelopes

Form must be versatile enough to accommodate cladding options, the designer's vision, and the engineer's capabilities. Altogether, form defines a building’s character and may include vertical, inclined or curved walls. These eye-catching architectural wonders can span vast distances while also withstanding the elements.

Resulting applications are more than just "pretty". Whether translucent, opaque or transparent, rigid or soft, lightweight or heavy, Geometrica's strong structural system can support it.

Many different forms of cladding can be used with Geometrica’s structural system, including:

Profiled Sheet
Secret Fix (steel and aluminum)
Standing Seam (steel and aluminum)
Glazing (transparent, textured and opaque glass)
Fabric or foil membranes

As a medium for architectural expression, Geometrica can help you address a myriad of issues in building design. We have a deep portfolio and proven success with many unusual design challenges.

To achieve an innovative look, some designs utilize a variety of geometries and treatments. While natural or artificial lighting options make opaque, colored or textured cladding especially appealing, other solid cladding reflective materials (like aluminum) are also suited for façades that curve in opposite directions.

Light and airy - an appropriate aesthetic for the Columbia City Airport (South Carolina, USA)

Design Freedom

Let the mind and spirit soar! Structure merges with imagination to achieve complete creative flexibility and design freedom.

With 25 years experience providing architectural domes, skylights, space frames, and façades, our mission is to provide customized design solutions around the globe. The question is: "What can Geometrica do for you?” To learn more, please complete our inquiry form and let’s get started.

Like a soft cloth, the Geometrica structure nests a planetarium sphere in the center (Malta)