A 900-seat performing-arts and exhibition venue on Basrah's waterfront. The client wanted a civic-scale glazed lobby visible from the corniche — delivered by a single accountable contractor rather than split between a fabricator abroad and a general contractor on site.
A 900-seat performing-arts and exhibition venue on Basrah's waterfront. The client wanted a civic-scale glazed lobby visible from the corniche — delivered by a single accountable contractor rather than split between a fabricator abroad and a general contractor on site.
Each chapter records a decision the next project team can evaluate: intent, performance, production and site delivery.
Public buildings change the engineering conversation: wider entrance grids, taller atrium glass, and an audience of thousands passing through the envelope every evening. The design wrapped the four-storey lobby and podium in unitized cassettes — factory-glazed, factory-tested, hoisted panel by panel.
Southern-Iraq conditions shaped every detail: surface temperatures beyond 50 °C, salt-humid air off the Shatt al-Arab, and dust events that can blind a site within an hour. Units were specified with double-silver low-E laminated glass on warm-edge spacers; framing carried a salt-spray-grade PVDF finish; and cassette joints were detailed for pressure-equalised, dust-shedding drainage.
Because this was a delivered installation, the contract separated supply warranty from installation warranty from day one. Our project team mobilised with partner crews, ran setting-out off the structural survey, and sequenced unit installation around the auditorium roof-closure programme.
The venue opened on programme. From the corniche at night the lobby glass reads as a single luminous plane; backstage, the maintenance team works from a documented panel-by-panel manual — every cassette replaceable from inside, without scaffolding.
Design, Supply & Installation
Middle East context: solar exposure, dust, drainage, finish durability and local review responsibilities are coordinated project by project.
3 400 m² unitized envelope delivered design-supply-installation under a single accountable contract
Unit installation peaked at 22 panels per day — factory sequencing paid for itself within the first month
Supply and installation warranties issued as separate instruments; responsibility never ambiguous
Engineering evidence package reviewed by the appointed local third party
This is a clearly labelled reference study using representative imagery. It explains a facade approach and is not presented as commissioned Starveil work.
Reference study
Unitized Curtain Wall · Public-building envelope
Reference study
Structural Glazing · Exhibition and arrival envelope
Reference study
Mashrabiya Facade · 720 m² envelope
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