Nearing completion, the luxury apartment housing project on Rugby Road in the Oranjezicht district of Cape Town, South Africa, is the first of its kind to be built with precast concrete. Peikko supplied the special concrete connections for the project.
The Rugby Road project comprises two four-story units, each with four bedrooms and a total living space of 425m2 per unit. The housing strives to implement sustainable architectural design derived from the Living Building Challenge; a very stringent green certification design founded by the Living Future Institute. The principles of energy and water conservation have been in focus throughout the project design.
“We could optimize water and energy collections better with a precast concrete design than with conventional construction. The intent of the house, from an energy point of view, was to be net positive to generate more energy than consumed over the course of a year, and to be entirely self-sufficient in water consumption, provided by integrating rainwater storage within the design parameters,” explains the project’s architect, Anthony Svelto, Architectural Designer at A-I-R Inc. in the USA.
Precast benefits from design to quality
”We chose the precast method due to a number of factors: speed of construction, the quality of surface finish, ability to cast intricate shapes repeatedly necessary for capturing solar energy and rainwater retention, and, of course, cost,” clarifies Svelto.
Thanks to the precast construction method, the Rugby Road project has a striking visual concept, which is the desired effect in its up-market elevated location amidst amazing cityscape, mountain, and sea vistas.
Cape Concrete as the precast supplier entrusted the endeavor of harnessing the specialized skills required to meet the architectural concepts, tolerances, and the element’s flush connections to Peikko South Africa, whose experience and range of precast connecting elements ensured a perfect fit between columns, beams, and decks by the perfect positioning of anchor bolts within the precast mold.
“Most of Peikko’s work in South Africa involves more traditional uses of precast concrete in industrial and commercial buildings and structures such as bridge design. There was something of a learning curve for all the professionals involved in the Rugby Road project and we were pleased that we could assist in fully meeting the architect’s design narrative,” notes Daniel Petrov, Managing Director at Peikko South Africa.
‘’We could optimize water and energy collections better with a precast concrete design than with conventional construction.’’
This article has been originally published in Connections 2023 customer magazine. You can find more Peikko's customer magazines here: Connections customer magazine