The Royal Festival Hall

EnlargeTaylor Woodrow completed the new extension building adjoining the Royal Festival Hall (RFH) in London.

The 4,000 sq ft building is part of the major refurbishment of this world famous cultural centre and the regeneration of the South Bank. It provides valuable additional office space for RFH staff as well as shops and restaurants, and includes development of the space under the adjacent Hungerford Railway Viaduct arches.

Built as close as two metres from the railway line, and with one elevation constructed above the railway parapet wall, the project provided plenty of challenges for the Taylor Woodrow team.

"These were overcome by a combination of our expertise in rail operations, a close working relationship with Network Rail and the technical and engineering skills of our Supply Chain," said Andrew Percival, Public Sector Director.

The building is founded on concrete piles and insulated from noise and vibration by a number of design features including vibration mountings on the pile heads, an acoustic wall inside the trackside cladding etc.

The structure includes 400 tonnes of steelwork and has to fit with the existing bridge/arches to fine tolerances requiring careful survey work and co-ordination with shop fabrication.

The finished building was awarded a BREEAM very good rating.

Key Facts:

Rail Interface - During the day, trains out of Waterloo are passing close to the building line every 10 minutes. The original planning anticipated night working possessions to carry out all work above the bridge on the West elevation. Possessions were required to erect the scaffold used to dismantle the old water tower / tank. However, innovative erection proposals obviated the need for possessions to erect the trackside cladding. A temporary steel gantry was erected so that the unitised cladding panels can be pulled along the West elevation for final positioning and fixing from inside the building, with no craneage involved