Evaluation Of Architecture Of Flemingate Being Appropriate For Beverley
The focus of this essay will be the Flemingate complex in Beverley, specifically looking at the construction techniques used, materials, and the resultant aesthetic of the site. A similar site has also been found which can be used for comparison for which the site can be scrutinised against, to give more objectivity to the conclusion drawn. The Location of the site is on the North side of the Beverley Minster, across the train tracks. Below is a map showing the location of the site within Beverley. (Insert location map)It is quite the sizeable site occupying 16-acres, on which resides multiple stores, restaurants, a collage, premier inn, cinema and the sites anchor store Debenhams. In addition to this new residential buildings are located at the north end of the site. The project had a cost of £120 million, with £70m of that spend on retail side of construction where the main focus of this review is. Other costs included preparing the site which previously situated a museum, tanners, and chemical works. Due to the latter two the site required lots of preparation to be suitable to build on which did take a sizeable amount of time and be very costly.
In the end Flemingate opened on the 3rd November 2015, after taking around 2-3 years total to complete. It was the biggest construction project in Beverley since the Minster was completed in 1420. The development was to create 700 new permanent jobs, that would hopefully result in an economic boost for the town. The client for this project was the Wykeland group, and the Architects who created the plan where the Harris Partnership. Construction of the commercial areas of the site started on 19/04/14, and covers an area of 11 acres. (Insert block plan of site)The site consists of six different blocks of varying shapes and sizes, with all but one of the blocks being constructed with braced steel frames. The exception to this is block G which instead is constructed using steel ground floor podiums two timber-framed upper floors. The Structural engineers was Curtins, and the steel works were done by Hambleton Steel. Who designed, fabricated, supplied and built all of the steel works as part of a specialist design and build contract for Wykeland. The contractor for the rest of the works on the site are Willmott Dixon. (Insert images of braced steel frames and steel ground floor podiums)
According to the Harris Partnership architect Andrew North the use of “structural steel for the project was the only way to go for buildability and the necessary speed of construction”. With being the anchor store for the scheme Debenhams which is situated in block C was the first site to have its foundations set, and have its framework started being put up. This was to allow Debenhams the maximum amount of time to get set up inside the building, as they would need to be ready to open once all the other works had been completed.
The Debenhams store has two levels and has been constructed around a 9m x 5m steel grid pattern, this is the same pattern as can be found in both of the other retail blocks A and E. (Insert image of 9m x 5m steel grid patterns)The second Building to have work started on it was block A, which incorporated the five-level multi-storey car park and a 122m long strip of retail stores. All of this makes block A the largest of all the structures on site, and Hambleton Steel contracts manager Doug Wills has said that “Approximately half of the projects steel tonnage was needed for block A”. The multi-storey car park unlike blocks C, E, and the retail parts of block A is based around a 10m x 16m Steel grid pattern, which also cambered cellular beams and galvanised external steel work. (Insert image of cambered beams, and the galvanised steel work. )Even though as mentioned the attached stores of block A are based around the same steel pattern as the Debenhams store, they are all double height structures that if needed in future can incorporate a mezzanine level if the occupant wanted to expand the store. This action is justified by Mr Parks who says that “Future proofing the retail units is one of the reasons steel was chosen, as adding mezzanine levels will be an easier task with steel. ” An example of where the steel construction chosen has shown its benefits is with block E, where over 30% of the structures retail zones had to be redesigned due to requests from the clients due to inhabit these spaces. While some of these changes had to be introduced retrospectively on site, Hambleton managed to make most of the changes before any of the steel had even arrived on this site showing how easily adjusted a steel framed building can be. Some of the changes that had to be made to the site were quoted by Hambleton’s Doug Wills who said “One of the changes has involved us extending block E by an extra couple of bays” and also that “Extra steel work has been added to link this block to the adjacent cinema structure,” the cinema is located in block B. Block B another structure that incorporated a large braced steel frame, and houses the cinema complex. The cinema itself accommodates six screens with enough seats to host 1000 people, though this is not how the cinema was original designed as it was only supposed to have five screens but a smaller unused space was able to fit another screen into it.
The cinema to better acoustic performance all of the cinemas seating support columns have been founded on acoustic pads. The internal seating rafters of the building even though they were designed by Hambleton where omitted during the rest of the steel works to not impede the work of the follow-on trades, though they were delivered to site at the same time they where put up later. The majority of the cinema is situated above a series of restaurants on the ground floor. (Insert images of block B and D)The last of the blocks to be built was block D, which is a two-storey office building, though it was initially designed to house restaurants but the change of function was easily incorporated into the steel design before any of the materials arrived. According to Doug Willis “the entire internal layout changed”. The blocks on the site all have an external façade of Oakthorpe Red Multi Stock Brick, it is the most sustainable stock brick available in the UK with the bricks containing recycled content. The brick was chosen to look as a natural extension to the traditional and original town centre. The site also has a collage campus included into it which cost £14m to build and includes 30 teaching rooms and the ETC venue that provides facilities for conferences and events. (Insert image of brick)The site chosen to contrast Flemingate against is the Cattle Market development (also goes by ARC) in Bury St Edmunds. The architects behind the scheme were Hopkins, with a £100m budget for the development.
The new Cattle Market opened in 2009 after taking two and a half years to build and is in the centre of Bury St Edmunds on the site of the old Cattle Market. To get planning permission for their designs Hopkins had to put forward a design that reflects the existing architecture of the town. In keeping with the style of the area the facades above the shop fronts were designed to be a traditional lime render, that have either a patterned or pargetted finish which appear on a lot of the buildings in the area. (Insert images of the site)The basic structure used for these buildings was a concrete frame with timber infills, due to this it was decided that to use a hydraulic, lime based, riblath expanded metal lathing, but still including the handcrafted pattern over top as was initially proposed. The render used on the buildings was Monostastier which is a lime-based render which has been designed to be used on new buildings, this was applied to a base layer of St Astier Interchromex. The base layer had to be left for a minimum of two weeks to be able to provide a solid base for the lime render to be applied to. The reason that Monostastier was chosen for the lime render is that it remains workable for around six hours, this allowed that patterning to be run by hand the same day the render was applied and allowed room for any mistakes to be corrected before the render set. To finish the render off the areas where the grooves intersected were covered with a small disk which was made from the same material, Thousands of these tiny disks were created and applied to all of the lime rendered panels.
The colour of the finished render looked as if the panels had been done with a traditional lime render, and afterwards was painted with a traditional lime wash. The total area of lime render on the site was 3000m2 and about 2000m2 of that area contained the pargetted finish. The contractors who did that plaster work was Cook & Sons Specialist Plasterers, and completed the plaster work within the four months allocated for it to be done. For the plaster work on site Cook & Sons won the National Plastering Award in 2010. (Insert images of the lime renders)The centre piece of the site is a visually stunning anchor store, which is occupied by Debenhams. It was clad in aluminium rainscreen panels and is a two storey clam-shaped structure. The entire scheme covered an area of six acres. Hopkins said that in working with the towns medieval grid structure and extending its series of linked public spaces, created a scheme that has been broken down into a series of appropriately scaled buildings. In general, these buildings contain cafes and stores at ground level with two storeys of residential above, and two buildings have shops on two levels. The development contains 36 retail units, 62 residential apartments, an auditorium which has been designed as a modern-day market hall, and 850 car parking spaces. This scheme has won multiple awards such as; the Civil Trust Award, Lighting Design Awards: Winner (Retail category), the RIBA Regional Award to list a few. (Insert images of ARC)Looking at the why the materials and techniques used in the Flemingate development were used it becomes clear that the main aim was to spend as little as nessisary, and get the work done as soon as possible. The first comparable to look at between the two sites it the framework used in each of the developments, Flemingate uses a braced steel frame whereas the Cattle Market uses concrete with timber infills.
The advantages in using steel for the construction of the framework is that it allows as has been mentioned in several instances above, that it allows for a high degree of flexibility in construction allowing for changes to be made to the plan at very late stages. It also has a much quicker construction time as all that is needed for them to be assembled on site as they do not have to wait any time to set, this allows for building work on site to progress at a quicker rate allowing the project to be finished sooner and reduced labour costs. Steel framework is also comparatively lightweight in contrast to a reinforced concrete frame being as much a 60% lighter, this can allow for a less expensive foundation system as it does not have to hold as much weight. Modifications to buildings at later stages can be as simple as simply removing a piece from frame. Though concrete does have several advantages over the steel counterpart such as waste material such as GGBS (Ground Granulated Blast-Furnace Slag) and PFA (Pulverised Fuel Ash) can be included in the concrete mix. Concrete constructs are inherently fire proof, whereas steel is not which may prove to be extremely beneficial in the event of a building fire. Being such a strong frame allows a lot to be done with the façade building, allowing for lots to be able to be supported from the framework and have many openings. All this shows that Wykeland when considering the construction of Flemingate chose the method that would have the quickest completion time with the lowest associated costs, this shows that there has been little consideration to whether the technique is the correct in terms of matching or mimicking the existing structures in the town. This leads Flemingate on a path that would make the resultant buildings look very different from those already in the town, though there is still a possibility for the façade to still resemble that of Beverley this already sets a bad precedent for the resultant look of the site. (Insert images of the vast expanses of brick)Moving on from the framework to the exterior of the buildings the brick while yes, it may reflect the kind used in the town centre it has been used in a completely different way. The composition of exterior of the structures are completely different to its surroundings, there is a clear disregard to trying to make Flemingate look like a natural extension of the town. It gives off a vibe that is very this will do, the bricks match so that’s enough. Buildings in Beverley have a very clear horizontal separation between the floors, at a glance the building can easily be broken apart along these lines. The buildings also have a strong vertical orientation given off by the windows and openings of the building, that often get smaller further up the building. The exteriors of the buildings typically found in Beverley are very varied with lots of openings and façade elements such as bay and oriel windows.
The buildings of Beverley are not uniform in height and generally range from around 2-3 storeys, and have many different materials used for the walls of the buildings such as; stone, brick (on its own or with a render or paint), timber stud with render or brick with stone detailing. This shows that while the buildings in Beverley do have a general format that applies to most buildings they are widely varied and gives the town a more natural and livelier feel, it invites you more to look around and appreciate the diversity and verity of architecture through to town. This idea was reflected very strongly in the initial proposals put forward by the architectural firm Panter Hudspith whose designs would have created a Flemingate that would honour the architectural style of Beverley. (Insert images of the different buildings in Beverley)These are aspects where Flemingate is most at fault it makes very little effort to look and act as an extension of the town, it’s site is a ways from the town centre as it is but still makes no effort to form some connection to it. The buildings of the main shopping route through Flemingate are very none descript, they do not stand out from each, all the buildings use the same brick and only that brick. There is no little details or areas of render to break the buildings apart, they all start to merge into one just an expanse of red brick. The windows and openings do very little to help rectify this which they are there it is not in the same way they are in the town centre, they are not accentuated on the buildings exterior and often seem to fade into the brick making the buildings look even more monotonous. They offer no strength to the verticality of the structures they are almost designed this way to keep eyes fixed on the ground level on the shops and restaurants, this is a clear shows the intentions of the developer that they are focused only of the retail and money-making side of Flemingate. People will walk through Flemingate and not even look up because there is no reason to, nothing draw your attention and leads your eyes up they remain fixed in a narrow tunnel at the level of the storefronts. Even when the buildings move away from the brick it is done completely wrong the large glass openings are very out of place in Beverley most windows around town are small paned windows with many dotting the building’s exterior not a few or one large expanse recessed or jutting out from the side of the building.
The glass of the cinemas exterior, the collage which does have some render but seems out of place due to its sparse use and separation from the brick work, and also whatever the deal is with the column overhang along block B which has no place being there are seems very much tagged on the building for ambiguous reasons that adds nothing to building except the question of why its there in the first place. (Pictures of the terrible composition of Flemingate)All this is in stark contrast to the Cattle Market in Bury St Edmunds where a clear effort has been made to match the design of the site to its surroundings, with the magnificent renders and hand patterning added to the exteriors of the buildings. While the have a more modern look to them retain a link to its surroundings that make the building at home and familiar in the town. While the opposite to this Flemingate sits in isolation from the rest of Beverley its architecture alienates it from the rest of the town, the buildings neither familiar nor innovative. Its clear the proposal was centred around the cheapest way to construct the buildings in the quickest and easiest manner possible, leading to a site that’s architecture is whole heartedly not appropriate for Beverley.
