Expansion at Iceland’s Keflavik International Airport Features SEFAR® VISION

DEPEW, NY… SEFAR® VISION fabric, laminated into the exterior glass façade of a new terminal at Keflavik International Airport in Iceland, adds a striking and sustainable element to the country’s growing transportation hub.

In 2016, the airport saw nearly seven million passengers, almost double what it saw in 2014. As a result, a new 4,700-square-meter terminal was built to service additional passengers to and from aircraft.

Architect Halli Sigurdsson and his team at Andersen & Sigurdsson Architects, based in Denmark, specified both Aluminum and Copper VISION fabric for its striking visual characteristics, as well as its ability to manage daylighting.

“We needed a maintenance-free material that could optimize the light and temperature inside the new terminal while still maintaining views outside to nature,” says Sigurdsson.

“SEFAR VISION was the only product that could accomplish all of this. In addition, it provides a one-of-a-kind look with a lot of design possibilities.”

Visually, SEFAR’s AL 260/55 Aluminum-coated VISION fabric and its PR 260/55 Copper-printed VISION fabric together complement the color scheme of the surrounding Icelandic landscape. From the outside of the terminal, the hues and texture of the fabrics lend a modern, yet organic-looking façade to the building. From the inside, the fabrics are transparent, ensuring views to the country’s natural beauty are preserved.

Functionally, the VISION fabrics shade incoming sunlight to reduce glare and improve the curtain wall's thermal performance. By filtering light and the associated heat entering through the façade, VISION fabric saves on energy costs for heating, ventilation, and air conditioning. In addition, its one-way transparency from the inside offers privacy for the airport terminal.

As a result, the project team enjoyed great success by specifying the VISION façade – and will continue to work with the product in upcoming projects.

“We are very happy with the SEFAR VISION product, and so is our client,” says Sigursdsson. “In fact, they specifically requested VISION be used on a second extension of the airport, which is currently underway."

The SEFAR VISION fabric interlayer is most often used to create unique aesthetic design possibilities in exterior glass facades, rain screens, curtain walls, glass rail, and interior and decorative glass partition wall systems. In addition to its aesthetic benefits for these applications, SEFAR assists with thermal modeling to demonstrate how the VISION fabric interlayer reduces solar heat gain.

SEFAR VISION fabrics can also be printed with UV-stabilized inks to produce any Pantone or RAL color, customizable patterns, and other visual effects without the exterior facing design reading through to the interior. The fabrics are available in four fabric density configurations and each can be produced with three different metal coatings – Aluminum, Gold, and Copper – in addition to custom-printed colors or patterns. The variety of the fabrics allows for unlimited combinations for VISION products. Each fabric features plain or twill weaves in a variety of aperture percentages (25-55%) and light transmission percentages (18-60%).

The Keflavik International Airport expansion was completed in late 2015. In addition to SEFAR Architecture, members of the project team included architect Andersen & Sigurdsson Architects, Frederiksberg, Denmark; general contractor ÍAV hf, Reykjavik, Iceland; glass manufacturer and processor GLASSBEL, Klaipeda, Lithuania.

For more information about SEFAR Architecture VISION, visit http://www.sefar.com/vision or https://www.pinterest.com/sefararch.