Fairview Products Protect Australia’s Historical Archives

Australia’s National Archives Preservation Facility was recently relocated to a new state-of-the-art building in Canberra. The 18,000m2 purpose-built facility by Doma Group currently houses more than 15 million historical records as well as having additional capacity to hold future records thanks to shelving that stretches approximately 115 kilometres.

The brief for the new facility was to provide a modern building construction that reflects the importance of safe and secure storage as well as being able to adequately preserve the nation’s history so that it is available to current and future generations. Designed by May Russell architects, two highly regarded cladding products were chosen for both the exterior and interior of the project to meet the specification requirements. Fairview’s Stryum, solid aluminium cladding in the Shadow profile was used for the exterior, whilst their durable, Argeton terracotta tile was selected for the interior of the building.

Reliably storing paper records requires that a building maintain an ambient temperature of 20 degrees with approximately 50 per cent humidity. These optimal storage conditions were enhanced by the quality and aesthetically pleasing qualities of Argeton terracotta tile. The interior was designed to reflect the Australian landscape and therefore a variety of tile colours were chosen such as Volcano Grey, Apricot Beige and Tuscan Red.
The exterior of the building features the Australian-made, non-combustible aluminium façade cladding, Stryum, that was anodised in several colours to provide a modern and timeless finish to the facility.  In total 3400m2 of the Stryum was installed on the new building.

More information on how and why these products were chosen can be found in the National Archives Project News.