Stephen Davy Peter Smith, the award- winning, London-based architectural practice, has specified Cembonit board on a stylish, ground-breaking apartment development in West London. Used to clad the penthouse apartments at the Morris House development in Acton, the rich grey Cembonit provides an attractive contrast to the adjacent bright, shiny, metal yellow metal cladding.

Morris House is the redevelopment of a brownfield site which included partial demolition of existing buildings, whilst retaining the listed façade of the old Morris Minor factory which has been carefully retained. Owned by Shepherds Bush Housing Association, the new homes are arranged around communal courtyards, featuring a mixed community of 129 live/work units (all for shared ownership) in addition to 41 residential apartments (34 for shared ownership and seven for outright sale) within Morris House and 19 commercial units in total. Stephen Davy Peter Smith was chosen for the project for its ability to create high quality, contemporary architecture for public sector clients - often with a limited budget.

“It is possible to create good looking, innovative architecture on a tight budget,” says Guin Dimock, Project Architect at Stephen Davy Peter Smith, “and we’ve proved it at Morris House. The key is to understand your materials, draw on their attributes to make these inherent characteristics shine. This is precisely what we did with Cembonit at Morris House.”

Installed shiplapped at Morris House, for a clean, attractive, water-tight finish, Cembonit can be used for external cladding, semi-exposed and internal lining applications. The colours in the range are muted and provide an ideal background for architectural design features. Cembonit is strong, durable and lightweight, and provides an attractive, cost-effective and maintenance-free Class 0 cladding panel, which is ideal for a variety of decorative cladding applications such as Morris House. Cembonit is a cost-effective, easily maintained material that transforms old facades at low cost, without losing their original appeal.

Cembonit can be used for new and old buildings alike, either alone or in combination with other materials. It is produced from cement, sand, cellulose, wollastonite and water glass and impregnated with an aqueous, hydrophobic liquid, which provides the sheets with a water and dirt repellent surface.

Using skills built up over 80 years, Cembrit select natural slate from Spain, Canada, Brazil, China, India and the countries of Western Europe. From UK quarries Cembrit offer Welsh, Cornish and Westmorland slates. Quality levels at Group factories are rigorously maintained to high standards with fibre cement slates produced to BS EN 492:2004 and manufactured under the control of a BS EN ISO 9001: 2000 quality management system. Furthermore the company operates an environmental management system to ISO 14001:1996. Cembrit UK is a member of Cembrit Holding A/S (formerly the Dansk Eternit Holding A/S) of Denmark, one of Europe’s major building material producers of fibre reinforced cement products for the roofing and cladding industry.

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