CMS glazes award-winning Carnegie Library project

The company was appointed to deliver the major window and curtain walling contract for the spectacular £12.4m building developed by Fife Council.

The Richard Murphy Architects designed project took an existing B-listed library, which was the world’s first Carnegie Library, built with money donated by Scottish businessman and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, and a former bank to create a major new cultural centre.

In addition to the Carnegie Library, the new building houses a new museum, exhibition galleries, local history Reading Room, new children’s library and a mezzanine café with stunning views over the landscaped garden to Dunfermline Abbey and the Heritage Quarter.

Benefiting from a £2.8m award by the Heritage Lottery Fund and a donation of £1m by The Carnegie Dunfermline Trust, the DCL&G building is organised along a top-lit internal street, criss-crossed by bridges.

To provide access, an adjacent car park was redesigned as a walled garden leading to an entrance courtyard. External materials are sandstone, oak and Corten steel, acknowledging the town’s industrial heritage and the steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, after whom the building is named.

CMS Window Systems was awarded the fenestration contract by main contractor BAM Construction, with the brief being to manufacture and install a range of aluminium windows and curtain walling finished in RAL 7024 graphite grey.

All windows use the Metal Technology 4-20 Hi+ system which incorporates a thermal break to deliver windows with excellent thermal properties. The complementary curtain walling – capped and silicone pointed – was fabricated using the Metal Technology System 17 Latitude to provide consistency in aesthetics and performance.

The windows and curtain walling are glazed with sealed units that balance thermal insulation with solar control to maintain an energy efficient, stable internal climate.

Windows feature a 6mm toughened pane for security and safety, a 16mm Argon filled cavity, and a 6.4mm Planitherm Ultra N pane to provide a balance of thermal insulation and solar control. The curtain walling incorporates an additional solar control element with the application of SGG COOL-LITE XTREME II and 20mm cavity.

Stephen Anderson, Aluminium Contracts Director at CMS Window Systems, said: “The new Dunfermline Carnegie Library & Galleries project was a superb project to be part of and we are delighted to have been part of the project team. We have worked extensively with Fife Council over the past decade in social housing projects, educational buildings and a wide variety of other non-residential schemes, so it was pleasing to be appointed to work on this most prestigious of projects that people across Fife, and Scotland as a whole, can be proud of.”