When a timber canopy was proposed for a new building alongside London’s River Thames, the team used Tekla Structural Designer to ensure it would withstand the wind forces coming off the water. Their work won a Special Recognition in the 2020 Tekla Global BIM Awards.
Sometimes even the world’s largest and oldest cities surprise us with a piece of undeveloped land. Such was the case in the London borough of Richmond upon Thames, where the city council decided to look into developing a part of the riverside in the neighborhood of Twickenham. The idea was to breathe new life into this part of West London.
Working together with the Royal Institute of British Architects, the Richmond council opened a competition for ideas on how to develop the area. Cullinan Studio Architects was one of the firms to take part, submitting a proposal for a community wellbeing center with a timber canopy and reinforced-concrete frame. The company asked civil and structural engineering firm Mason Navarro Pledge to assess the feasibility of their proposal.
“Twickenham is such a beautiful part of London and I was surprised to find out there is that much free land there,” says Euan Stenson, a structural engineer from Mason Navarro Pledge who led the modeling part of the project. “We were tasked with creating the 3D model in order to determine whether the proposed timber design was structurally feasible in this environment.”
