Ceramic Cladding
Ceramic cladding is a highly versatile, modern façade solution with excellent mechanical and aesthetic characteristics. Available in a huge variety of beautiful colours and textures, ceramic rainscreen cladding enables you to achieve different façade finishes through use of visible and hidden fixings as part of the structural design.
Made entirely from natural materials, ceramic cladding can be designed to deliver a contemporary finish, or something more traditional, reproducing the natural beauty and appearance of hewn stone such as granite or marble.
It also has long-lasting good looks. Every ceramic cladding panel offers complete tonal integrity and design consistency, with through-body colour, pattern and graining – ensuring that its aesthetics do not change over time. The material is light, UV radiation resistant and completely impermeable.
This type of rainscreen cladding does not absorb airborne contamination or dust, nor does it support algae growth. It is exceptionally durable and strong, and free from the flaws that can weaken quarried stone in its original state. Its relative light weight compares very favourably with naturally quarried stone too, significantly reducing loadings on the substructure and building exterior. Other benefits include easier on-site handling and installing, resulting in a faster, cost-effective operation. An innovative material, it is the choice of architects who want a proven, engineered solution with known performance.
Hydrotech technology represents a new generation of ceramic cladding. The ceramic tiles are coated with the natural chemical titanium dioxide, which gives them self-cleansing and air-cleansing properties and can eliminate 99.9% of the bacteria on the surface. The tiles self-clean through the natural reaction of the coating with UV radiation. First, photocatalytic activity brings about the decomposition of organic substances – like bacteria – and other pollutant material on the surface. Second, the hydrophilic coating when it reacts to UV causes the rainwater to spread out on the surface of the tiles as a thin film, before washing away the materials destroyed by the photocatalytic effect. The air-cleansing property of the tiles is caused by the release of oxygen during the reaction of the titanium dioxide coating with UV. This converts nitrogen oxides (one of the causes of acid rain and pollution) into the non-acidic nitrate (NO3).
Aliva Ceramic offers a range of rainscreen cladding solutions, including lightweight options that are equally suitable for new build and refurbishment, available in a variety of sizes up to 1000m x 3000mm and engineered slabs 1500mm x 3400mm. Please call or email us to discuss colour availability.
You can find out more about Aliva’s façades projects here.