82
Intelligence | Athletes’ Village
BELOW: Different architects working adjacent to each other results in changing facade approaches on a common ‘chassis’.
BOTTOM LEFT: Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands used dark engineering brick to differentiate town houses from the apartments above.
BOTTOM RIGHT: Niall McLaughlin’s block has etched concrete panels based on the Elgin Marbles.
ambivalent about merely appending a facade to a structure whose plan and sectional form was predetermined, even saying that: ‘Design architect Niall McLaughlin declared it pure facadism. But we felt there were ways to strike a balance between monolithic structure and diversity achievable with different facades.’ As BLL design director for the Athletes’
with slab to slab heights running at 2.89m. Column centres were set at 4m, running in line with the face of the floor slabs at their perimeter. At the interface of the townhouses with the apartments above, transfer beams allow the apartments to break free of the 4m wide townhouse module. The 10 blocks, a third of which are affordable housing, are served by 60 cores. The concrete sub-contractor slipformed the floors, and once they were up and running, one was cast every 5-6 days. Then it was a case of liaising with the 15 architects to create facade treatments. Due to the accelerated programme,
the project was originally to be procured using Construction Management, but when the economic crash in 2009 forced the government to underwrite the whole development, it moved to Design and Build in what was termed ‘Tier 1’ projects. ‘Block N15 was already being built and became a test case for the rest of the scheme and the first in the development of a precast language,’ recalls Will MacDonald, senior facade manager for Bovis Lend Lease. ‘And lessons learned from the initial CM route effectively became the Employer’s Requirements.’ Fletcher Priest’s Kendall recalls that initially architects were
Village Steve King explains, a number of constructional and elevational constraints set by the Employer’s Requirements came into play. ‘We were explicit about the guidelines for architects, including writing the performance specs for the facades to make sure they met Code Level 4, which involved tempered air and heat exchange. The thermal model we developed came up with a 30% ratio of glass to wall, and we insisted on an 1100mm transom height for the tilt and turn windows,’ he explains. They were also told overheating was an issue and that meeting the ‘g’ value for heat gain would be a greater concern than the ‘u’ value. King adds that the facades are all high-performing, ‘designed to achieve 80% efficiencies, over the SAP 2005 requirement of 44%.’ For visual diversity different architects worked on different parts of the same block. Block N15 brings together Glenn Howells, Niall McLaughlin and Piercy Conner. The design team drew up composite elevations with mock-ups of facades, and blocks were discussed side by side and reinvented by the Village Design Board, the Design Review Panel and planning authority. Kendall says this was because usually ‘you’d want to understand context, but there was none, all the neighbours were virtual’. But every block has both market sale and affordable housing embedded in the design– and there’s no external distinction in tenure mix, although internal unit sizes might
‘ The design team drew up composite elevations with mock-ups of facades, and blocks were discussed side by side’
WWW.RIBAJOURNAL.COM : SEPTEMBER 2011
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117