Technical Solutions Ltd
Structural and secondary steelwork for school
Holland Park school was originally built in 1958 and is located within the Kensington conservation area, adjacent to Holland Park in London. In March 2010 work began to re-develop the school campus including the construction of a new single block.
The new block, orientated north-south, is approximately 102m long x 34m wide and incorporates a full-length central atrium. Teaching wings are situated on either side with link bridges on each floor spanning the voids. General classrooms are located on the quieter east side of the building and larger specialist classrooms and sports facilities are located on the west side of the building facing the park. The new block also includes a sports hall, dance studio and a 25m swimming pool. The new construction will ultimately provide accommodation for 1,500 students aged between 11 and 18, and over 100 staff.
Visualisation, clash checking and correct interface detailing
One major part of the project is the external envelope package. This work consists several key architectural elements including curtain walling, spandrel cladding, stone panelling, maintenance walkways, stainless steel mesh cladding and copper clad structural steel fins. The external envelope works is split into several different individual packs, some contain structural/secondary steelwork in various forms. The Atrium roof, the NW and SW stair cores and the entrance canopy are being manufactured by another fabricator. The remainder of the secondary steelwork is being designed, detailed, manufactured and installed by SFC (Midlands) Ltd.
The copper clad fins are a key architectural feature on the project. The original design intent prepared by Newtecnic envisaged the fins would be tied at regular intervals, however the lead Architect wanted to omit as many of these as possible. The final solution developed by Technical Solutions Ltd was able to do this, thus satisfying the architect & client, has provided economic benefits to the project and has also omitted a fairly complex interface detail between the ties and the fin cladding.
The structural steelwork within SFC's package was modelled using Tekla software. In the case of this project it was necessary and very useful to model almost the entire school block superstructure in Tekla, as modelling adjacent structures allowed for good visualisation, clash checking and correct interface detailing to be achieved. Tekla BIMsight has also been utilised for co-ordination between the project parties.
