tesa masters the art at Schipol

When it came to creating a seamless finish on a new, glass frontage for the Rijksmuseum, situated on Holland Boulevard in Amsterdam Airport Schipol, it required a robust, invisible fix and tesa ACX^Plus provided the perfect fit.

As a world first, the 2,200 square metre structure consists of 10,000 glass panels, bonded together with tesa ACX^Plus. Well recognised for its unique viscoelastic properties, which compensates for substrates with different coefficients of thermal expansion, tesa® ACX^Plus delivers excellent stress dissipation and high bonding power.

Collaborating on the project with tesa, glass manufacturer, Glassolutions, built its own assembly line to bond the glass panels onto layered glass building blocks.

Assembly involved fastening 10,000 glass panels (320 x 7 x 1cm) onto the blocks. Each block consisted of seven layered glass panels, compressed using two strips of 6mm tesa ACX^Plus on each panel. A bespoke laminating station enabled the correct pressure and positioning of the tape and in total, 2,200 square metres of panels were fastened to 1,500 glass building blocks.

On site, the building blocks were placed in floor and ceiling profiles and bonded with pre-applied tesa ACX^Plus. Different tape thicknesses were also used to create the curves of the structure’s U-shaped walls.

In accordance with the airport’s strict requirements for safety and maintenance, tests confirmed the absence of sharp, and potentially harmful edges, and easy replacement of the panels.

Eric Deibel, Account Manager, tesa B.V. commented, “As well as delivering an aesthetically pleasing structure, this high-quality tape is ideally suited to rigid substrates and glass, and due to its unique viscoelasticity, absorbs any frictions and stresses in construction.”