|
The
Masonry Society's 1999 Haller Award was present to
Whitby Bird and Partners, Structural Engineers in
London, England for their unique creativity in the
restoration of Winterton House at Watney Market in
London's East End. Clayford T. Grimm, Chairman of the
Haller Award Committee, presented the Award on behalf of
TMS at the 8th North American Masonry
Conference Banquet.
Grimm
described Winterton House as a 25-story building that
was constructed in the 1960's. and which needed
considerable repairs. Upon evaluation of the building,
it was determined that only the structural steel frame
could be salvaged, and even it needed enhancing to
support the loads required by modern building codes.
Faced with refacing the building, the architects and
engineers decided to provide solid brick masonry
exterior, not just a veneer. Their solution entailed
stripping the building completely down to the steel
frame and surrounding it with a free standing
load-bearing brick wall. The only connection between the
wall and frame occurs at floor level where sliding ties
are dovetailed into the concrete floor as the brickwork
proceeds. A steel frame on the roof was used to
pre-stress the masonry by jacking in some 1,124,000 lb.
The upper steel columns were placed in tension to
provide extra load carrying capacity for the floors.
Tension rods to steel columns transfers loads of up to
112, 400 lb to each column. |
|
Winterton House at Watney Market in London's East End,
was completely reclad based on a design by Whitby Bird
and Parnters. For their exceptional structural design
work, Whitby Bird and Partners received The Masonry
Society's 1999 Haller Award. |
One million perforated wire-cut
bricks of medium strength were used on the project, which was
constructed on time and at budget. Because of simple detailing
by the design team, only eight bricklayers were employed on the
project. The straightforward detailing facilitated high quality
workmanship for the masonry without self-angles
H.W.H. West of the British Masonry Society
accepted the award on behalf of Whitby Bird and Partners since
representatives of their company were unable to attend the
conference. He noted that Mr. Mike Hitchens, a spokesman for
Whitby Bird and Partners, felt that the project "was a rare
opportunity to develop and exploit a radical new cost-effective
idea based on the compatibility of steel and masonry. Made
possible by the ease of construction of simple masonry with
inherent low maintenance and durability, it continues as a
living test bed to gather data to enable others to use the same
concepts more easily."
The award is named after
Professor Paul Haller, who started a renaissance in the use
and design of structural masonry. Haller, a civil engineering
graduate from the Federal Technical University in Zurich,
Switzerland in 1924, was responsible for testing over 1600 brick
masonry walls, and based on the results of those experiments,
designed an 18-story building with no structural frame. The tall
load-bearing walls of this structure were only 12 to 15-in.
thick, causing nothing less than a revolution in the structural
use of masonry. From this design and his experimental research,
rational structural design of masonry became possible.
The Haller Award is presented every three to four years to an individual engineer
or an engineering firm that has designed an outstanding work of structural masonry
engineering. This award recognizes the beauty, elegance, and economy of structural masonry
projects.
Details on submitting packets for
consideration for future
Haller Awards are included in the
Application.
|