lightweight : frames and panels The gull-wing roof of the hotel’s pavilion links it with the Winter Gardens on the left. Lightweight panels faced with Stanton Moor stone. Stanton Moor sandstone from Derbyshire went to Stone Panels in America to be applied to an aluminium honeycomb backing and reduced to 8mm thickness to create the lightweight cladding that has been used in conjunction with Protec lightweight steel framing, structural glass and metal decoration to create a new landmark building, the Macdonald St Paul’s Hotel, in the centre of Sheffield. Natural Stone Show 14-16 March 200

Sheffield’s new Macdonald St Paul’s Hotel with its 1,300 lightweight Stone Panels cladding used for the first time with a Protec lightweight frame and a finish of Stanton Moor sandstone from Derbyshire. The view is across Peace Gardens with the Town Hall on the left. ightweight aluminium honeycomb panels faced with ultra-thin Stanton Moor sandstone fixed on a lightweight steel frame. That’s the solution used to satisfy planners’ and architects’ desire to use the local stone for the new 15,000m2, 156-bed Macdonald St Paul’s Hotel sandwiched between the modern Winter Garden and the Grade I listed...

The Macdonald St Paul’s Hotel in Sheffield seen from the Peace Gardens with the Winter Garden in the background. There are 10km of lightweight framing rails supporting the cladding and colonnade soffit panels and there are 41,000 fixings holding the Protec system and its stone panels in place. The lightweight stone panels on the Sheffield Hotel weighed 16kg/m2. Solid stone cladding would have weighed at least 10 times more. Lightweight stone panels are not a cheap alternative to more traditional 50-75mm stone cladding. On the contrary, per square metre they are more expensive. Including the lightweight...

lightweight : frames and panels The front of the Macdonald Hotel and the side facing the Town Hall. the architect. “The person in the street won’t realise it’s only a veneer.” It is not, in fact, quite what everyone wanted. There were a lot of people who did not want anything to block the view of the new Winter Garden and the old Town Hall. However, Stephen Nicholls says: “Now we’ve finished, people are finally coming round to the idea of thinking it’s not so bad after all.” For Stoneguard, this was only the second time they had used lightweight stone panels externally, the first time being four...