Barcode Becomes A Landmark

A unique new building in Sydney's west has become a landmark visible to tens of thousands of motorists each day.

Despite the familiar pattern in black and white cladding, the massive facility is not about to join the ranks of tourist venues such as the Big Banana or the Big Pineapple. In fact the purpose built warehouse will be protected by state of the art security to keep out all but bona fide visitors.

BlueScope Lysaght has supplied 21,000 square metres of its wide cover LYSAGHT INTEGRITY® 820 cladding for the north and south faces of the building as well as the roof.

The big barcode displayed on its flanks and roof is merely a pointer to the technology used to keep track of the building's contents.

Motorists on Sydney's M4 Motorway at Greystanes are already familiar with the outline of the Recall Information Centre, the city's newest document management facility.

Recall is a world leader in document management solutions including the storage of digital and physical documents and audio-visual materials as well as secure information destruction. The Greystanes centre will hold nearly four and a half million archive boxes of corporate records when it is fully stocked.

Architect Thierry Lacoste of Lacoste + Stevenson Architects said there were several reasons behind the choice of the LYSAGHT INTEGRITY® 820 cladding and the barcode graphic.

"Barcodes are at the centre of everything which Recall does," he said. "That was the first consideration, then there was the challenge of how to handle a very big wall area. We decided on the barcode theme to break up its visual impact then worked on a couple of ideas before we finally specified a pattern which is actually Recall's Australian Business Number as a barcode."

"The barcode is also repeated on the south side in LYSAGHT INTEGRITY® 820, so there was quite a lot involved for ourselves and for the contractor, Skyview Roofing Australia Pty Ltd to ensure the correct sheet pattern."

The INTEGRITY® cladding system provides the benefits of long spanning, pierced-fix cladding, with the waterproofing characteristics of a concealed fix profile. It is available with state of the art sealing plates engineered to combine with Higrip fasteners and EPDM washers to provide superior watertightness.

When used the sealing plates bond to the cladding, aiding the location of the Higrip fasteners which ensure that the cladding and the sealing plate remain locked together for their entire service life.

All overlapping ribs on INTEGRITY® sheets have specially formed capillary grooves to prevent water entering at the side laps.

The choice of a 0.48mm BMT pierced fix cladding for the Recall Information Centre's 27 metre high walls also provided an additional level of cross-bracing against wind loads according to Thierry Lacoste.

"The cladding is not part of the engineering solution as a structural element, but it does provide some additional strength," he said.

Recall operates 250 state of the art information centres around the world, structurally designed to withstand earthquakes and other natural disasters.

The roof of the centre's administrative offices is clad in 1,700 square metres of LYSAGHT KLIP-LOK 700 HI-STRENGTH® in COLORBOND® Metallic steel in the colour CITI®.

Participants in the project include developer Macquarie Goodman, building contractor Buildcorp Australia and fabricator Cullen Steel. All cladding work was carried out by Skyview Roofing Australia Pty Ltd. Fitout includes an advanced high density racking system integrated with joystick controlled archive box handling equipment.

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