Looking magnificient

High-specification fair-faced concrete façade

Constructing a fair-faced concrete façade is not easy. Optical impairments such as porosities, blow holes, coloration irregularities, shading and clouding phenomena are common and tend to disrupt the overall result. As the quality of the concrete is of vital importance to the appearance of La Seine Musicale, the client and the planning engineers decided to adopt a façade upgrade system, opting for MC’s products and expertise.

Strong performance

In January 2017, the contractor Bouygues Construction had a number of test surfaces prepared by various bidders. As the music venue was due to open in just three months’ time, the solution had to be as quick as it was reliable, and it was the product systems from MC that ultimately won the day. The MC system consisted of a fine concrete cosmetic filler from the Emcefix family, the pigmented concrete coating Repacryl and the transparent graffiti protection coating MC-Color Proof vision. It was applied within the shortest time thanks to the efforts of the specialist applicator – Contreat of Belgium – easily beating the competition. Following the success of the test surface, work was begun on the project proper and was soon moving along quickly. Within just eight weeks, over 9,000 square metres of concrete surface had been reprofiled, coated and protected.

Curtain up for Emcefix, Repacryl and MC-Color

Following expert preparation of the substrate, the first phase involved the correction of porosities, blow holes and formwork joints, together with general deviations. This was done using the high-quality concrete cosmetic system Emcefix-Spachtel F, mixed from the three colours – white, grey and anthracite – in order to achieve the required concrete shade. The fair-faced surface was further upgraded with Repacryl to ensure a homogeneous and high-quality finish across the entire area. Here, MC worked with Contreat to develop a special mixture of three Repacryl colours: grey, concrete grey and light grey. In addition to offering excellent aesthetics, the upgraded concrete surfaces are UVstable, weather-resistant and colourfast. The concrete surfaces were then coated with the transparent graffiti protection MC-Color Proof vision up to a height of 3 metres, delivering around 3,000 square metres of coverage. This makes the façade easy to clean even for stubborn graffiti – particularly beneficial for buildings accessible to the public.

MC’s final crescendo

Finally, around 150 square metres of floor surface in the entrance area of the building complex were coated with MC-Floor TopSpeed. The pigmented, fast-setting roller coating is based on innovative speciality resins that reliably protect the floor. Not only does this deliver an excellent level of scratch and mechanical resistance, it also ensures a long service lifetime and a high-quality finish.
Looking magnificent – both inside and out – this remarkable addition to Paris’ skyline opened at the end of April 2017 with a concert by Bob Dylan.