Carnegie Library
6th March 2018

Window, door and curtain walling manufacturer and installer CMS WINDOW SYSTEMS has played a key role in the creation of the new £12.4m Dunfermline Carnegie Library & Galleries which was voted Scotland’s best building in the 2017 RIAS (The Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland) Awards.

The project, designed by Richard Murphy Architects for Fife Council and Fife Cultural Trust took an existing library, which was the world’s first Carnegie Library, built with money donated by philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, as well as a former bank to create a new cultural centre. The new building also houses a museum, exhibition galleries, local history Reading Room, children’s library and a mezzanine café.

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

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. The complementary curtain walling – capped and silicone pointed – was fabricated using the Metal Technology System 17 Latitude.

Windows feature a 6mm toughened pane, 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: “ 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.”

www.cmswindows.com