5-7 St Helen’s Place

Szerelmey were responsible for the complicated new faience facade designed by Eric Parry Architects. It is comprised of 14,000 faience elements incorporating 168 different shapes including curved pieces, column pieces, copings and soffits. Some of the faience elements are very large, up to 800x300mm which presents series technical questions that both the manufacturer and Szerelmey as installer, had to overcome.

The lower ground floor faience units are white, while levels 2-6 are coloured with a bespoke, mottled glazed developed specifically for the job, and somewhat reflective of leather in tone. Szerelmey installed the precast backing structure and fixed each faience element individually back to this using stainless steel fixings. The joints between are approximately 10mm with a lime mortar grout.