In the heart of Frankfurt city centre, Tower 185, an ambitious building complex almost 200 metres tall, has reached completion. Hydro Building Systems has developed in close cooperation with façade specialists FKN two WICONA unitised façade applications for this prestigious skyscraper. These tailor-made solutions enabled the 27,000 square metres façade surface to be completed within time and budget.

The tower's architecture is the work of the Frankfurt-based Professor Christoph Mäckler Architekten. The actual tower, comprising three sections, stands on a horseshoe-shaped plinth building. The skyscraper has an aluminium glass façade, and looks as though it has been divided from the bottom up and turned outwards in order to make room for the rotunda, a fully glazed tower in the middle of the structure, on an oval ground plan.

The two types of unitised façades are based on constructions of the WICLINE window and the WICTEC EL façade. The glazed central section of the tower, the Rotunde, is composed of polygonal special unitised constructions based on the WICTEC mullion-transom façade. These two solutions made it possible to meet all technical, economical and ecological expectations. In fact, they exceeded the required thermal-insulation values, achieving a Ucw value of up to 1.3 W/m²K. The specified sound-insulation values were also exceeded.

Recurring units and processes enabled the entire façade surface to be planned economically. The façades were manufactured according to a secure process in workshop conditions without weather influences and at ideal temperatures. The units were designed in such a way that it was possible to implement innovations enabling a particularly safe and efficient assembly process, such as a new assembly robot. This method made it possible each day to assemble up to 20 of the units measuring almost 7 square metres and weighing 450 kg, thereby meeting all the deadlines despite the difficult weather and wind conditions throughout the winter months.