THE FIRSTS PAGE


AT WSP, WE’RE UNITED BYOUR PASSION FOR INNOVATION ANDOUR PIONEERING SPIRIT. HERE ARE JUST A FEWOF THE BREAKTHROUGHSWE’VE MADE RECENTLY.


TAMPERE, FINLAND Copyright Studio Daniel Libeskind for NCC


A TRANSFORMATION FOR SCANDINAVIA’S LARGEST INLANDCITY


Tampere may have a beautiful setting over a long ridge between two large lakes, but it means that the city’s cars, trains and buses must all pass through a narrow bottleneck – an urban planning nightmare. WSP Finland has been helping to turn this into an opportunity, providing city planning and zoning services for a massive construction project that aims to reinvent the city as a destination for architectural tourism. The railway tracks will be covered with a deck, the base for a 50,000m2


arena, office and


residential buildings and a 28-storey hotel, to a vision created by Chicago-based architect Studio Daniel Libeskind. In May 2010, the city authorities and contractor NCC approached WSP with an urgent zoning assignment – the city plan had to be drafted by the end of October. A total of 20 WSP urban planning professionals worked to create not only the main plan, but a number of other clearances for structural noise, wind, railway safety and storm drainage, as well as a cityscape assessment.


terhi.tikkanen-lindstrom@wspgroup.fi


A TOWER WHERE THE STRUCTURE DOESN’T BLOCK THE VIEWS


ONEMADISONPARK, NEW YORK


Building a skyscraper is about balancing the demands of structural integrity with commercial pressures: selling as much of that precious high-rise space as possible. At New York’s One Madison Park, a 621ft residential tower, WSP Cantor Seinuk’s structural engineers have combined an extraordinarily slender design with 360° views. The developer, Slazer Enterprises, had bought the air rights for the whole block, allowing windows on all sides – and challenging the engineers to support the building from the inside. WSP’s solution created vast open spaces and maximum flexibility, a cruciform system of shear walls bisecting the central plan, with only five extra columns around the perimeter. Wraparound terraces every five storeys meant the design had to support 9ft cantilevers off the columns and shear walls, which it managed to do without load transfers, creating a singular load path throughout the tower. The team also found an innovative way to minimise sway – tuned liquid column dampers. Three large concrete tanks of water sit on the roof, and the water sloshes in the opposite direction to the wind forces pushing the building.


bart.sullivan@wspcs.com


ONE OF THE UK’S MOST SUSTAINABLE SUPERMARKETS


M&S SIMPLY FOOD STORE, SHEFFIELD


02 SOLUTIONS


WSP has helped to deliver Marks & Spencer’s greenest-ever store, the first of a series of projects designed as “Learning


Stores” to trial the latest sustainable technologies. The new Simply Food store at Ecclesall Road in Sheffield secured a BREEAM Excellent rating, and includes a green wall irrigated by rainwater collection systems, natural refrigerants in its fridges and air conditioning, and a target of 100% FSC timber, reclaimed bricks and recycled aggregate. It will be lit entirely by LED lighting, both inside and outside. WSP provided civil and structural engineering, as well as contaminated land and geotechnical investigation services, which enabled more than 95% of soil to be reused or recycled as aggregate rather than sent to landfill.


darren.barnes@wspgroup.com


AT LAST – A CLEAR PICTURE OF SOLAR ENERGY POTENTIAL


Installing solar cells on rooftops is an increasingly popular method of producing renewable energy – but determining exactly which roof surfaces will yield the best results is difficult. WSP, in partnership with Gothenburg University, has developed a GIS tool called SEES (Solar Energy from Existing Structures), which can show potential solar radiation across an entire city, a district or a single roof. SEES is especially useful because it describes the real roof in its environment, rather than a hypothetical model, taking into account slope, orientation and changing shading patterns. It calculates the total exposure for each part of the area in kWh throughout the year, and produces a map to clearly show the suitability of different surfaces.


per.jonsson@wspgroup.se


THE FIRST REAL- TIME TRAFFIC LIGHT MODELLING PROGRAMME


When WSP’s traffic signal engineers created a design package to help them work better with traffic modellers and highway designers, they hadn’t realised how valuable it would be. But this unique product, known as WSPSIM (WSP Signal Interface Module), is now ready to be rolled out to WSP’s clients. The software replicates on-street traffic light strategies in real time, allowing WSP’s teams to design, test and demonstrate how traffic will really move around busy urban road networks. It saves time and money by producing quicker results with more certainty, and allows for better-informed decisions which help to smooth stakeholder negotiations. The product has already been presented at an industry conference as the first of its kind to be developed anywhere in the UK, and possibly the world. It will be launched to WSP’s project managers and traffic signal modellers via a webinar before its public roll-out.


paul.speirs@wspgroup.com

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