AJN_MDW_Charleroi ©

An unusual tower has appeared in the urban landscape of Charleroi. It is the new police quarters imagined by the renowned french architect, Jean Nouvel. The tower is 75 meters high and is comprised of 25 floors, it’s most significant feature besides its scale is it’s blue brick cladding.

The designers of this project have developed a passive building approach which relies on the reinforcement of thermal insulation, the elimination of thermal bridges and air-tightness. The building envelope therefore plays a crucial role in reaching these aims.

Fixinox provided the masonry supports for the Police Tower, this technique allows for the cladding’s weight to be transfered to the loadbearing structure without compromising the integrity of the insulation. The structure of the building is innovative in the sense that it allies concrete slabs and non loadbearing timber frame walls . The curved shape of the building added and an extra level of complexity to the study of the fixings. The solution developed by our engineers was to fix the supports only the slabs’ extremities as well as to place arched masonry supports above the large openings.