Refurbishment of an existing eight-storey concrete framed building including a basement. The building originally took the form of terraced housing in the late 19th Century, but some areas suffered substantial bombing during WW2 and were later rebuilt.
Portland was commissioned to undertake structural calculations for various stair and lift installations for the refurbishment of Citi View Paddington.
Portland attended up front meetings with the architect to agree on the size of pertinent steelwork sizes, through conceptual sketches. Due to the unknown nature of a refurbishment, we had close contact with the contractor and attended numerous site visits to ensure anything new discovered during the opening up works was accounted for in our design.
As this was a refurbishment project, the existing building acted as a constraint in terms of the construction and installation of new trimming steelwork. To trim out the new voids required for the lift and the stairs, we adopted loose steel beams fixed between the concrete frame.
Given the existing floor construction was ‘pot and beam’ Portland decided to remove a larger area of floor than required between the main structural concrete beams. The new floor around the proposed voids was then infilled with timber, this lighter material offset the increase in weight from stairs/walls and provided sufficient working room for the contractor to install the steel trimmers. It also avoided the need to cut the floor at sporadic locations and ensured a structurally adequate solution was achieved.
Portland Projects
News