43 Temple Row is located in the Colmore Business District, Birmingham’s main commercial hub and part of an important conservation area renowned for the quality and diversity of its architecture. The offices were built in 1980 to a contemporary style with quarried travertine and granite facades. The original travertine had weathered significantly and water ingress had damaged the building’s concrete frame and caused panel fixings to become badly corroded. Cost effective long lasting replacement cladding was required. Whilst new quarried stone panels had been ruled out due to their porous nature, Birmingham City Council’s planners were keen to ensure that any replacement solution matched the look of the original travertine.

Cladding specialist Shackerley proposed ceramic granite, a fully vitrified, engineered construction material, made entirely of natural constituents, that can be produced to emulate quarried stones such as granite, limestone and marble. Strong, hard and impervious, it offers a low maintenance solution, another important consideration for busy city centre locations. Shackerley supplied facade panels in a ‘travertine’ style and colourway that was virtually indistinguishable from the original stone, replicating the visual contrast with the quarried granite that was being retained.

The ceramic granite cladding was installed by Task Contractors Ltd using Shackerley’s SureClad® Access system, chosen for its speed and flexibility of installation and unique facility to install panels non-sequentially. The entire system was prefabricated off site at the manufacturer’s ISO 9001 quality controlled factory in Lancashire.