Stapleton House Student Accommodation, Islington, London

Ancon designed and manufactured a bespoke stainless steel support system for the attractive brick cladding on Stapleton House, a landmark ten-storey student accommodation development in Islington, London.

Due to the quality of the finish achieved on the masonry façade, Ancon’s customer Grangewood Brickwork Services was shortlisted for Specialist Brickwork Contractor of the Year at the 2017 Brick Awards.

An eye-catching but sympathetic development, Stapleton House features a combination of traditional facing brick to complement the surrounding vernacular with contrasting areas of brightly coloured metal cladding.

The Challenge

The project features a complex masonry façade. One particular recurring architectural feature is a vertical channel of recessed brickwork, extending the full height of the building.

Also, although the masonry support angles are fixed to the main structural concrete frame they had to be designed to avoid clashes with a light steel framing system, spanning between the concrete floor slabs, which protrudes into the insulated cavity at the brick support bracket locations.

The Solution

Ancon manufactured over 2,200 metres of MDC bracketed masonry support angle, designed to suit the exact cavity width, masonry load, fixing locations and special masonry features on Stapleton House.

Ancon’s versatile MDC system proved the ideal solution for supporting the masonry features as it can be supplied in a variety of configurations. Brackets are welded to the support angle at designed spacings in an MDC system, and the material content of both components is optimised to ensure the most economic fixing solution is manufactured. The support angle can be positioned anywhere from the top of the bracket to a position below the bottom of the bracket, and the fixing brackets can be notched to accommodate protrusions in the cavity.

On Stapleton House, Ancon supported brickwork at the recurring recesses in the façade by supplying the MDC support system in short easy-to-handle sections, with welded brackets of differing depth. This configuration allows the bricklayers to maintain the minimum two-thirds bearing of the masonry on the support angle.

An Ancon MDC/P/NB system was designed and manufactured to accommodate an angle position below the line of the structural frame, featuring notched brackets to avoid the light steel framing projecting into the cavity.

Supply of the bespoke MDC brick support system was project managed by an Ancon design team and delivered to site to suit the construction schedule.