ALTRO OF THE NORTH
We discover why specifiers chose flooring products from Altro when refurbishing one of Newcastle’s most striking landmarks.
During an £18m renovation of Newcastle College’s renowned 11-storey Parsons Tower, contractors used an extensive package of Altro flooring and wall cladding products to transform the tower from top to bottom.
The 1960s tower block is one of the first buildings to be seen when approaching Newcastle by road or rail. The recent refurbishment has given the building a striking contemporary gold and blue facade, as well as a new lease of life internally. The former sixth form block has been transformed into a multi-faceted, state-of-the-art teaching facility that incorporates exciting and stimulating learning environments to reflect 21st
century needs.
These include real life working experiences for the expanding curriculum of Health and Enterprise, with training environments such as hospital wards, childcare, domiciliary care and specialist care environments, including a sensory room where students can practice and develop their knowledge.
The ground level and entrance area have been reconfigured to ensure the maximum use of space and include a café, real working environments, including two functioning ‘pop-up’ shops, and student services with an expansive learning resource centre and refectory space on level one.
The project was the brainchild of Redbox Design Group in Gateshead.
Redbox Associate, Sean Gallagher, explained how specifying the right products for the new-look Parsons Tower was a vital part of the project: “Parsons Tower is a physical beacon for Newcastle and the college, and it therefore had to satisfy a broad range of strict criteria both internally and externally.
“We chose Altro for a number of reasons; we know Altro products very well, they are reliable, durable, superb quality and very cost effective against their competitors.
“More specifically, Altro has products that tick all the boxes in terms of health
30 | PUBLIC SECTOR
and safety, hygiene and colour choice. In addition, their infrastructure is excellent, which means they offer a complete package of guidance and support throughout the duration of the project.”
Altro safety flooring products offer sustained slip-resistance for the lifetime of the product, keeping your risk of a slip or fall to just one in a million.
Northern Floorcraft installed the Altro flooring within Parsons Tower. The company has been working with Altro for 45 years, installing their flooring in a wide variety of applications such as education, healthcare and retail.
Warren Pearson, Director at Northern Floorcraft, said: “This project was a significant size and, with 11 storeys to finish, we had to work in very close co- operation with a number of other trades and the site manager to ensure we stuck to the schedule and produced a perfect result. Good communication skills are essential on projects of this size. We were on site for five months, with a team of between two and six fitters.
“The stairs in Parsons Tower are old and irregular, with complicated details, profiles and curves and each set of stairs was different for each storey. So this part of the project involved a lot of time consuming and intricate cutting, and very precise fitting skills. For this reason, we were very glad we were fitting Altro Suprema on the stairs. This product is very pliable and great to work with, which made the whole task a great deal easier and quicker.
“Fitting the Altro Wood Safety and Altro Walkway inlay within the refectory was also a challenge, as we had to lay the flooring in three phases rather than all in one go — again because of working with other trades on site. This meant we had to take extra care to ensure that the ‘planks’ within the Altro Wood Safety design lined up exactly each time we fitted a new section. The project ran very smoothly, and this was helped a great deal by Altro, who gave us very hands-on support.”
www.altro.co.uk www.tomorrowscontractfloors.com
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