In the middle of St. Kilda, a suburb of Melbourne, you will find Luna Apartments - one of the most impressive buildings in the region. For the façade of this exceptional residential building, Australian architects Elenberg Fraser chose a bronze-coloured, anodised sun protection mesh from GKD – GEBR. KUFFERATH AG. In addition to a distinctive appearance, this ingenious sun protection system affords the building functional comfort too.
The architect duo likes to flout the rules, symmetries and conventions in their designs - a principle that they have once again implemented, with impressive results, in Luna Apartments. Thus, the five-story apartment building with restaurants, shops and 72 one- and two-bedroom apartments occupying an area of 7,000 square meters is characterised by its extravagant design. Like a bronze-coloured arrow, the building fits perfectly to its surroundings.
The entrance end of the building forms a rounded tip and is supported by just one pillar, bestowing it with a floating lightness. But the most unique feature of Luna Apartments is the bronze skin that shrouds the building like a veil. Privacy and sun protection panels made of bronze-coloured aluminium mesh underline the purist design. Even the glass behind the mesh has a bronze shimmer.
The movable privacy and sun protection panels, together with clever lighting technology, allow residents to set their own level of intimacy or openness: when the lights are on inside the apartment, people on the street can see inside. However, the exterior lighting, which illuminates the inside just as well through the fully glazed mirror glass front, prevents unwanted visibility from the outside. The sun protection panels made from the bronze-coloured aluminium mesh ALU 6010 from GKD contribute towards this effect. The individual panels were given a warm tone by being anodised in a dipping process. In total, the apartments are adorned with 289 of these sun protection panels in various widths, some fixed and some manually collapsible. So around 600 square meters of bronze-coloured, shimmering mesh seamlessly envelopes the building, improving both the atmospheric quality and the energy efficiency within the apartments by providing adjustable shading as well as high transparency.
