Structural Concrete Competition 2012

The competition brief was to design a hotel building to be constructed as part of the redevelopment of a former dock area on an estuary close to the centre of a large UK town. The six storey hotel included a feature restaurant to be constructed over the dock at 1^st floor level.  The brief included the provision of conference facilities at ground floor, so the load from the buildings above had to be transferred in some way over the wider spans required at ground floor.

The judges decided to award a joint first prize this year as there were two entries of similar standard.  The entry from Heriot Watt University had an interesting raked column solution for the support of the restaurant and included precast floor slabs to simplify the construction of the floors over the dock.  The team also included wide ‘Y’ shaped columns at ground floor to keep within the requirements for column spacing in the conference area.

The team from University of Southampton used deep beams to transfer the load at first floor and provided a ribbed slab to reduce the self-weight of the upper floors in comparison to the weight from flat slabs.

The team from Imperial College provided the best sustainability report, where the students had to imagine that they were engineers in 2060 refurbishing the hotel to an office building with higher imposed loads and wind loads due to climate change.  The team from Imperial College provided a comprehensive list of factors to be considered together with possible solutions.

Joint Winners: Heriot Watt

Graeme Burton

Christopher Grubb

Kurtis Wood

Daniel McKendrick

Tutor: John Cairns

Joint Winners: University of Southampton

Nicholas Barrett

Calum Lawrence

Andrada Ioana Tabrea

Joseph Garlick

Tutor: Alan Bloodworth

Sustainability Winners: Imperial College

Stephanie Bianco

Victoria Falzon

Nathan Vella

Jean Vella

Tutor: Robert Vollum