A round thing - skirting boards for columns

What seems simple at first glance can sometimes be quite complicated: The Walloon Parliament was to get a new house; a new building that functionally extends the old parliament building. The façade with lots of glass is businesslike, clear and open to the outside. Inside, the rooms are bright and functional. Only 260 columns, which are distributed throughout the building, loosen up the simple objectivity. And it was precisely these columns that presented the floor layers with an unexpected challenge when finishing off the walls to the floor with white aluminum baseboards.

260 columns become a challenge

The tranquil town of Namur is the capital of the Belgian region of Wallonia and the seat of the government and parliament. Despite its modern, linear architecture, the new building for the members of parliament creates a successful link to the historic buildings around it. With an area of 3,744 m², it provides all 75 Walloon members of parliament and the political groups with suitably equipped work areas.

The team of architects has visually softened the objectivity shown on the outside in the interior areas with 260 delicate columns and half-columns. In addition, white aluminum baseboards create a smooth yet highly durable transition from wall to floor. At first glance, nothing out of the ordinary. But in the search for suitable skirting boards, it turned out that the combination of the required product properties is definitely a challenge for manufacturers: Because to match the RAL 9010 white aluminum skirting boards, the plans called for column rings and half-rings with a diameter of only 30 cm. After a lengthy search, we finally found a smart solution that could also be manufactured at short notice in high quality and in the required quantity.

The requirements - bending without breaking

Since the skirting boards were to be in a RAL color, Küberit immediately decided on a powder coating. First, however, it had to be tested whether already powder-coated Type 911 skirting boards could be bent into 30 cm rings without loss of quality. The test was successful and the first hurdle was cleared. Now the task was to find a way for convenient, safe assembly. Küberit's manufacturing specialists decided on two half rings that could be joined together on site to form a column ring. For a neat finish on the half-columns, the team shortened the half-rings slightly so they would fit snugly against the walls. Production was millimeter work, because if the curved profiles deviated just a millimeter or two from the specifications, unsightly gaps would result. Since the deadline pressure caused by the search for a solution was high, Küberit decided to manufacture the total of 520 column semicircles in its own factory. "We can produce special designs here at relatively short notice. This manufacturing cannot be compared with series production. Traditional craftsmanship is used here, practically as in the past. This requires a high level of expertise and precision," explains Olaf Holtschmidt, responsible for product development at Küberit. On site, the floor layers installed the half-circles and shortened half-circles with special adhesive. In total, they processed 830 m of skirting boards and 140 shortened half-circles of type 911 in the new parliament building and joined 380 half-circles of the same type to form column rings - and everything fit to the millimeter.