Selected Project
Connetics
Designed to support the activities and travel of 300 staff and vehicles, this 4.5ha green field development includes a warehouse, workshop, and commercial office complex. The bespoke requirements for the project were the site and building should be flexible, resilient, and safe while promoting collaboration and flow within the workplace. The development, consisting of two separate buildings are primarily of steel construction with precast perimeter concrete panels. The first building designed to an importance level 4 (IL4), consists of a two-storey office and a workshop with a mezzanine floor. The second building designed to IL3 is primarily used as a single storey warehouse. The benefits of a lightweight steel superstructure allow the capacity for quick recovery from disruptions as well as being seismically sustainable. The lateral resisting systems of the buildings are the key drivers to achieving high seismic performance. For the office / workshop, the seismic resistance is predominately concentrically braced frames in the longitudinal direction and portal frame in the transverse direction. Roof bracing was added in the roof plan to reduce deflections to meet the serviceability limit state criteria (SLS2). SLS2 requires that the building remains operational with only minor repairable damage under loading, equal to an ultimate limit state (ULS) earthquake for an IL2 building. For the warehouse, a combination of portal frames, cross braces and roof bracing were designed to resist the lateral loads in both directions. Through the strong understanding of the client’s requirements at the initial phase, the core design requirements of resilience, safety in design, flexibility and collaboration were carried through to all stages of this project and contributed to the success of this project. Project authored whilst at WSP Architecture.
- Category
- Commercial Architecture
- Location
- Canterbury
- Year
- 2017
