ArGeTon facade

Klaipeda, Lithuania's port city on the Baltic Sea, has a new landmark. Nowadays, instead of the dockside crane dominating the mouth of the Courland Lagoon on the Baltic Sea, there are two twenty-storey tower blocks soaring up. Both buildings, in the form of the letters "K" and "D" from the architects Arches of Vilnius, are a symbol of the new beginning and the opening up of the city to the Baltic Sea region: the "K" stands for "Klaipeda", the “D” for the river "Dana" which flows through the centre of the city. The river once constituted a natural boundary between the city and the prohibited military-industrial no-go-area of the harbour. The independence of Lithuania in 1990 triggered the opening of the no-goarea. The architectonic concept of the building results from this, opening up like two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. The "K" and the "D" tower over the silhouette of the town like two opened gateways, unblocking the path between the city and the Baltic Sea once again. Moreover, the brick-red ceramic ArGeTon facades of the tower blocks symbolise the continuation of the roofs of Klaipeda's old city beyond the port and elegantly merges them with the glass and aluminium elements of the two buildings. All in all, around 6,000 m² ArGeTon-tile plates in a 225 x 500 mm format with two horizontal dummy joints as Terzo plate tiles were used. The buildings on the Baltic Sea coastline are exposed to very high wind loads. They must be able to sustain a corner load of 4,000 N/m². A mineral rock wool insulation is built behind the façade. The U-value of the façade lies between 0.2 and 0.25 W/m²K. The "K" does not just house office space but also contains a hotel, the "D" serves as pure living space.