Dunbar Grammar School, Dunbar
Woolgar Hunter provided Engineering services on the new £9m extension to Dunbar Grammar School. The extension increases the school's capacity providing new classrooms and flexible teaching spaces, as well as a large atrium enclosing a communal social space. Interventions in the existing school building were also undertaken to enhance the functionality of the existing facilities. The classrooms house improved resources for Home Economics, Fitness, Social Subjects and English. Externally, a new grass sports pitch provides facilities for hockey and football suitable and are made available for community use.
Client: FES/East Lothian Council
Architect: JM Architects
Dunbar Grammar School, Dunbar
Woolgar Hunter provided Engineering services on the new £9m extension to Dunbar Grammar School. The extension increases the school's capacity providing new classrooms and flexible teaching spaces, as well as a large atrium enclosing a communal social space. Interventions in the existing school building were also undertaken to enhance the functionality of the existing facilities. The classrooms house improved resources for Home Economics, Fitness, Social Subjects and English. Externally, a new grass sports pitch provides facilities for hockey and football suitable and are made available for community use.
The structural solution involved a steel frame with composite floors, providing long internal spans to give flexibility to the architect's partitioning and room layout. An ETFE pillow roof over the Social Hub atrium provides a bright, spacious environment for less formal teaching and pupil socialising, with terraced seating used as a breakout and discussion space. Around the atrium, steel space-frames provide the long spans and tight deflection control required by the ETFE roof.
A suspended ground floor slab over pad foundations allowed the building loads to be taken to the stiff glacial till deposits beneath the layer of 'made ground' overlying the site. Building tight against the existing school presented challenges both in the engineering design and the construction. Proximity of new foundations to old was managed through the design to avoid causing settlement in the existing masonry facades This required the complex steelwork of the atrium roof to be supported at a minimum number of points, with steelwork around the perimeter carrying these loads back to inclined columns.
The structural solution involved a steel frame with composite floors, providing long internal spans to give flexibility to the architect's partitioning and room layout. An ETFE pillow roof over the Social Hub atrium provides a bright, spacious environment for less formal teaching and pupil socialising, with terraced seating used as a breakout and discussion space. Around the atrium, steel space-frames provide the long spans and tight deflection control required by the ETFE roof.
A suspended ground floor slab over pad foundations allowed the building loads to be taken to the stiff glacial till deposits beneath the layer of 'made ground' overlying the site. Building tight against the existing school presented challenges both in the engineering design and the construction. Proximity of new foundations to old was managed through the design to avoid causing settlement in the existing masonry facades This required the complex steelwork of the atrium roof to be supported at a minimum number of points, with steelwork around the perimeter carrying these loads back to inclined columns.
Client: FES/East Lothian Council
Architect: JM Architects