Euston Tower, London Case Study

When glass panels started falling out of London’s tallest office block, its owners and consultants Arup turned to  Lustalux for help. Lustalux completed one  of their biggest ever contracts, applying external grade 100-micron clear Safety Film to more than 5,000 glass spandrel panels at the 124-metre high Euston Tower, which is home to hundreds of HM Revenue and Customs staff. The spandrel panels – blank glass panes between the skyscraper’s 36 floors – were spontaneously shattering, putting passers-by below in peril. This was an urgent health and safety issue as impurities in the glass were causing spontaneous breakage and our job was to make the building safe again. Each spandrel panel – there were 5,144 - had a clear polyester film applied to it held in place by an aggressive adhesive system and then anchored to the frame around the panels with an extremely strong, flexible structural silicone.

Lustalux It is one of the UK’s leading suppliers of window film ­- an alternative to replacing glass that can perform many functions, from heat and glare reduction to bomb blast mitigation and security.  The film applied to Euston Tower is constructed of extremely tough layers of polyester very similar to the films used for bomb blast protection and is manufactured in the USA. Six men took six months to make the panels safe, using cradles to work their way gradually down the tower, which was built in 1970 and is London’s 14th tallest building.