Abian Tower
Brisbane, QLD
Brisbane, QLD
Architect: Wood Marsh
Contractor: Sunland Construction
Product: ShapeShell™-RT
Surface Area: 2000 sqm
Application: Internal Cladding
Responsibility: Design, Engineering & Manufacture of Feature Elements
Located on the edge of Brisbane’s Botanic Gardens in Queensland, Abian Tower by Wood Marsh Architecture introduces a refined sculptural presence to the city’s skyline.
ShapeShift Technologies supplied a series of internal wall cladding panels shaped to resemble a ‘draped curtain’. To achieve this fluid, fabric-like form, the panels were made from ShapeShell™ RT, a lightweight fibre-reinforced thermoset material offering high flexibility and strength. With exceptional flexural capacity and formability, ShapeShell™ RT allowed each thin panel to curve slightly during installation, conforming seamlessly to the curved wall without distortion or stress — a performance only achievable with advanced reinforced materials.
For installation efficiency, ShapeShift developed a custom interlocking system with concealed joints, ensuring precise alignment and a continuous surface finish. The result is an elegant, sculptural wall feature that captures the softness of draped fabric while delivering the durability and precision of engineered construction.
Abian Tower sits on the edge of Brisbane’s Botanic Gardens. ShapeShift supplied internal wall cladding panels shaped to resemble a draped curtain, manufactured in ShapeShell™-RT for architect Wood Marsh. The panels are thin, conform to a curved wall, and meet with concealed joints to read as one continuous surface.
A drape is the hardest thing to imitate in a hard material, because everything that identifies it as fabric is the opposite of how panels behave.
Drapery has no flat areas, no repeating module and no straight lines. It curves in two directions at once and reverses that curvature at every fold, so there is no plane to set out from and no dimension that repeats. It is also read as soft, which means the eye is looking for exactly the things that give a panel system away: a flat spot where a curve should continue, a hard edge where a fold should turn, a joint line running across a surface that is supposed to be one piece of cloth.
The panels then had to sit against a curved wall. A flat panel on a curved substrate either bridges the curve and leaves a gap or has to be forced into place, and forcing a thin brittle panel to bend is how you crack it or leave it under permanent stress that shows up later as a crazed or bowed surface.
ShapeShell-RT was selected for its flexural capacity and formability. Those two properties do different jobs here. Formability is what allows the drape geometry to be moulded in the first place, including the reverse curves of the folds. Flexural capacity is what allows a thin panel to take up the curvature of the wall behind it and conform to it without distortion or stress.
That combination is not available in most panel materials. A thin cementitious panel has very little capacity to flex before it cracks. A plaster panel has to be moulded to the exact final shape because it will not accommodate anything. A fibre reinforced thermoset can be moulded to the form and still conform to the substrate, which removes the need for perfect agreement between panel and wall.
The joints are concealed, which on a curved surface is a harder requirement than it sounds. A hidden joint on a flat wall only needs a straight line to be straight. Here the joints follow curved lines across compound geometry, so adjoining panels must agree along a curve for the full length of the joint. That is a manufacturing accuracy problem first and an installation setting-out problem second.
Internal cladding is fixed to a wall or a subframe, not to a facade, so weight looks less important than it does outside. In practice it decides the fixing system. Light panels can be supported by a concealed subframe with modest fixings, which is what leaves room to hide the joints and adjust alignment. Heavy panels need visible or substantial support, and support that has to be seen is support that interrupts the drape.
This project used ShapeShell-RT, our FRP composite system.
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