Galicia Nueva is an exceptional cultural monument, a Renaissance-Baroque castle in the Galician town of Halič, close to the Hungarian border. The castle, which dates back to the 12th century, was bought by a private investor in 2005 and opened to the public as a hotel in 2016 following a 10-year reconstruction project costing more than 14 million euros.
A key feature of the renovated castle is its magnificent glazed dome atrium, which lets daylight flow throughout the building. The dome covers an impressive 500 m² area and is 15m tall.
Guthrie Douglas were approached to solve the problem of integrating shading systems to protect the atrium from heat and glare, to ensure the space could be used year-round. More importantly, the solution needed to be sympathetic to the historic building’s elegant restoration. Our TESSTM 512 was the natural solution for shading this extraordinary space since it can cover up to 100m2 with a single mechanism, leaving just slim support cables behind when retracted.
Guthrie Douglas’ engineers worked closely with Bohemiaflex CS from the design stage, up to the assembly and installation, to ensure the systems were implemented with complete precision. The teams spent more than two weeks installing the systems in the already operational hotel, accommodating staff and guests by working at night only. The systems were towed on ropes up to 15m high using mobile scaffolding, and over Venetian marble floors.
The end result is a superior shading solution that provides protection and optimum user comfort, whilst the festooned fabric panels blend with the overall atmosphere of opulence.
Guthrie Douglas engineers enjoy the unique challenge which each individual project brings including those that have sensitive and less standard installation requirements. Read about a project where we used abseiling equipment to install external shading on a curved glass façade in Prague.
News courtesy of Guthrie Douglas