Hybrid Structures
Hybrid construction incorporates the use of a number of different materials in order to achieve the ‘best’ overall solution depending on the requirements of the client. In effect it allows us to tailor design structures to meet the different needs of our clients.
The advantages are that the best material for each particular use can be selected therefore achieving the optimum balance between, structural performance, speed of construction, quality, aesthetics, environmental credentials and cost.
Hybrid structures have been used to construct a wide variety of structural solutions ranging from large scale retail stores to solid panel multi-storey building and leisure facilities housed in large interconnecting domes.
Recent examples of such projects include Tesco’s new environmental stores, which consist of glued laminated timber frames (Glulam) and hybrid roof trusses to the front of house, timber roof and wall panels, steel bracing members and structural steel to the back of house.
The newly constructed Woodlands Trust Headquarters in Grantham incorporates the use of cross laminated timber panels (X-LAM), to form the walls, floors and roof structure while also making use of a limited number of steel sections. The design of the floor panels is such that concrete panels were used to act as storage radiators, they also act compositely with the X-LAM floor panels to provide a stiff, shallow long spanning panel which helps regulate the internal building temperature.
The Pods located in Scunthorpe provides a leisure complex housed in a completely different structural solution. It consists of five interconnecting geodesic timber domes of different sizes (Diameters ranging between 20m and almost 50m). The structure consists of a glulam structural frame with feature steel node connections, timber roof cassettes and an internal steel mezzanine floor.
