Housing

Hale Village, Tottenham (Block N1)

Hale Village comprises a series of significant developments to provide 468 units by Lea Valley Estates, with Building Design Partnership leading the master planning.  The five hectare former brown field site is located between the River Lea and the London to Cambridge railway line, immediately adjacent to Tottenham Hale Station.

The riverside development which is modelled on Hammarby, a waterside district of Sweden's capital Stockholm, will include over 1,200 residential units, besides commercial and retail floor space.  There will also be a hotel, student accommodation, a health centre and significant areas of quality green space.

The project is engineered with a strong environmental input and it is planned to have a green roof where the rainwater is to be harvested and used to fill WC cisterns.  It is the client's requirements that Level 4 of the Code for Sustainable Homes is met.

Our appointment to United House as structural engineer and mechanical & electrical engineer is for an 11 storey apartment block with attached four and six storey wings.  A total of around 120 residential units of varying types will be included in the complex.  Working with United House's architect, KSS, calfordseaden initially provided a concept design for the project, to obtain full planning consent.  This stage was achieved 18 months ago.  Since then the detailed design has been completed, and works are well underway on site.

The structural design comprises a reinforced concrete frame supported on piled foundations.  The frame is of 'flat slab' construction, with no downstands beneath the slab soffits.  This has the advantage of enabling table forms to be used, which speeds the construction process and hence reduces programme and cost. 

The frame was designed using the latest 3D modelling techniques, which enabled us to ensure that the most economic solution was derived, with optimised slab thicknesses and reinforcement quantities.  It has been estimated that savings of around 30% have been achieved using this process compared with more traditional approaches to design. 

Additional value engineering included consideration of a novel permanent formwork system for creating the lift cores and pre-casting the columns.  The latter proved to be advantageous to the trade contractor and has been adopted for the construction. 

The M&E design involved utilising a site wide biomass and CHP district heating system to provide heating and hot water to each of the dwellings in a highly sustainable manner.

Utilising the latest building modelling software we were able to calculate the heating and hot water requirements of the building, this helped ensure the plant wasn't oversized and minimise the demand on the network and hence reducing cost.

In order to maximise the sustainability of the project, in addition to the district heating system, low energy lighting was used throughout the building and extensive along with the use of a sedum roof. Further to this heat recovery ventilation was used within the dwellings, helping to ensure all dwellings achieved code level 4 without excessively increasing cost.

Clients: Newlon Housing Association/United House Limited

Contract Period: Commenced mid 2007/ongoing

Value: £17 million

Services: Employer's Agent, Structural Engineer, M&E Engineer and CDM Coordinator