Spring Newsletter 2010
March 2010
Finally Spring is arriving and green shoots are appearing everywhere - well at least that is true in the gardens. We have managed to survive the last year without redundancies and have noticed a slight pick-up in the workload for this year, certainly in comparison to last year. It is good to have come through it with our team intact. We have a number of very exciting prospective projects here and in Glasgow. All we need is for them to be confirmed and things will look even rosier. We are determined to continue to provide a first rate service and to try and do it for the reduced fees now demanded. This is a very difficult task but we will stick to our high standards to protect our Clients and their projects. All in all a good start to the year.
Maryhill Leisure Centre, Glasgow
We have been working with Glasgow City Council's Civic Design Department on this new £6.2 million facility. The Centre is built on the site of the derelict Victorian Public Baths, which were closed to the public in the 1980s after being in use for 90 years. Most of the original building was demolished, however, the listed sandstone facades have been retained. The steel trusses over the old pool hall were also kept although these required significant refurbishment due to corrosion of the top chord. The trusses now sit above the new sports hall. Contiguous piled walls support the retained facades around two sides of the sports hall and there is a 50m long, 4m high reinforced concrete retaining wall along the northwest boundary. The new-build section of the Centre comprises a blockwork-clad two-storey steel frame for the fitness suite, dance studio, changing areas and staff facilities. At the north end the new pool hall is formed with a double height steel frame, including a striking multi-coloured glazed screen facing Maryhill Road. The 25m-long main pool and the baby pool are both formed in reinforced concrete. The Centre is scheduled to open at the end of March 2010.
21a Russell Place, Edinburgh
Arcade Architects and Stephen Farrar have been working on a new extension to this listed Victorian villa. The extension provides a new south facing dining/family room, guest suite and utility room. The series of glazed timber screens under a canopy roof are supported on a lightweight steel structure set between the villa and the existing garage. The roof pitches up to allow high level glazing to bring in extra daylight that is in turn reflected in mirrors designed to make the interior space appear continuous and the partitions appear to 'float' below the roof. The existing kitchen has been comprehensively remodelled and opened up to form a continuous space with the new dining/family room. Large sliding doors allow the new rooms to open directly to the canopied deck and sunny courtyard outside.
Healthmatic, Glasgow
Healthmatic Ltd has been working with Martin Forbes on a number of public toilet refurbishment projects for Glasgow City Council. Healthmatic designs, supplies, cleans and maintains public toilets across the UK using Italian-built automated toilet units. The toilets featured at St Vincent Place are amongst the busiest in Glasgow. As part of the alterations the ground level structure was demolished with the old iron panels, which were cast from the original Caledonian Railway, being retained for the new building. We established that the existing basement roof slab was suitable for the new loading arrangement, and the structure was rebuilt in blockwork before the toilet 'pods' were lifted into place. The railings were refurbished and amended by a specialist fabricator to suit the new openings. Martin has also worked on the installation of glass-clad toilets at Collins Street, close to Glasgow Cathedral. The unit was assembled in Italy and then simply lowered onto a reinforced concrete foundation with cast-in sump and drainage lines. Healthmatic have installed a number of similar units across Europe with the concrete box being clad with different materials to suit the surrounding environment. This facility is the first time that glass cladding has been used. The high-specification toughened glass is bolted back to steel channels cast directly into the concrete. www.healthmatic.com
20 Inverleith Terrace, Edinburgh
The garden at 20 Inverleith Terrace was the Grand Award Winner at the much-coveted BALI National Landscape Awards 2009. Colin Eastwood worked with landscape architect WaterGems (Alba) Ltd on the extensive landscaping of both the front and rear gardens. The ambitious scheme included the levelling of the rear garden to form an upper level containing the new retaining walls and included the formation of a new pond that forms part of a Sustainable Urban Drainage Scheme. Tucked into the corner of the rear garden is this large walk-in compost shed, formed from reinforcement bars woven like a basket in an organic form sympathetic to this well designed garden.
Auchterarder Parish Church
Dominic Echlin and Hurd Rolland have been working on this £1.1 million project to extend Auchterarder Parish Church. Charles Rennie Mackintosh is understood to have had a hand in the original design of the 1900s building. The new extension includes a central hall, meeting rooms and a new kitchen. The main hall roof is a dramatic engineered timber structure comprising diagonal trusses made up of large sections of Douglas fir connected by steel plates and nodes. The rest of the superstructure is also in timber, a combination of exposed posts & beams and hidden timber kit panels & proprietary timber roof trusses.
Slattadale, Loch Maree
Rural Design Ltd and Martin Forbes worked on this new house in a spectacular setting on the south side of Loch Maree. The £1.25 million project was to build a two-storey house making the most of the surroundings with a predominately glazed elevation facing the Loch. Combinations of steel and timber elements were used to create the striking geometry and large clear spans within the property. The structure was built off traditional pad and strip foundations, and the wall panels were constructed with timber studs. The sloping and vertical elements of the roof were formed with a steel frame, while both steel and timber beams support the first floor joists that cantilevered out to the front to create a continuous balcony. A sedum system was installed on the parallelogram-shaped flat roof, which was supported on timber I-joists. The Practice also designed the drainage for the site, which comprised a soakaway for the surface water and a two-stage treatment system for foul drainage. An existing outfall to the Loch was retained in the final scheme after gaining approval from SEPA.
National Museum, Edinburgh
We were asked in February by ACE if we would be willing to take an MP on a site visit to help them to increase the understanding of the construction industry in Parliament. We offered the Royal Museum Edinburgh project as a suitable example of a major and complex project. With the agreement of RME, Ben Adam and David Narro met Gavin Strang MP for Edinburgh East, Crispin Williams - a representative of ACE, and Susan Gray and Fiona Bell of RME. We gave the group a short presentation about the programme of alterations and then took them around the building site. Gavin Strang found the visit very interesting and asked many pertinent questions about the project, the industry and the issues affecting our sector at the moment. ACE explained that we were the first firm of Consulting Engineers to take up the chance and that they were very pleased with the choice of project and the manner in which it was carried out.
Bike to Work Scheme
The Bike to Work Scheme offers tax incentives that enable staff to enjoy serious savings on the price of a new bicycle (plus related safety equipment such as a helmet and a set of lights). The Practice has signed up for the scheme in partnership with Edinburgh Bicycle Co-op and are delighted that staff are taking advantage of the scheme. www.edinburghbicycle.com/comms/srv.a4d?f_pg=biketowork.htm
