Window, door and curtain walling manufacturer and installer CMS Window Systems has played a key role in the creation of the new Dunfermline Carnegie Library & Galleries (DCL&G), which was crowned Scotland’s best building in the 2017 RIAS Awards.

The company was appointed to deliver the major window and curtain walling contract for the spectacular £12.4 million project by Fife Council and Fife Cultural Trust.

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.

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.”