The team at B&K Structures are celebrating Offsite Awards success after winning the highly sought-after Commercial Project of the Year Award for The Gramophone Works. They also picked up a ‘Highly Commended’ award for UCL PEARL in the Education Project of the Year category.
This year’s Offsite Awards saw record entries and brought together the industry to celebrate the best use of offsite construction in the UK and internationally, with the winners of the 2022 awards were announced at the ceremony on 20 September (co-located at Offsite Expo).
Bethan Roper, BKS Marketing Manager, said: “It’s fantastic to be recognised at the Offsite Awards amongst such fantastic example of offsite design. The competition was fierce but a testament to the fantastic work happening across the industry. The Gramophone Works and UCL Pearl really showcase the best of hybrid timber-steel construction, and we’re delighted to be acknowledged as a leader in the field by such a distinguished panel of judges. Congratulations to all our team and our outstanding construction partners!”
Through careful design detailing and value engineering, B&K Structures is able to offer the best possible offsite manufactured construction solutions, ensuring a smooth integration for follow-on trades and delivering award-winning, environmentally and sustainable projects on time and to budget.
Find out more: https://www.bkstructures.co.uk/
Winner - Commercial Project of the Year – The Gramophone Works
This landmark low-carbon urban project has refurbished and extended an existing canal-side building. Using mass timber, it has been increased from two to six storeys, adding 60,000sq ft of office space. The former headquarters of Sanderson Fabrics and later of Saga Records, Gramophone Works was once at the epicentre of reggae music in London. A comprehensive effort to retain the existing structure references the heritage of the area and recognises that the most sustainable building is the one that already exists.
A hybrid glulam and CLT structure sits alongside retained reinforced concrete to create optimum value for the client, end users, and the environment, with 1222 TCO2e of biogenic carbon sequestered in the structure. Now home to a shared cafe, reception, vibrant offices, and generous amounts of external space at ground and roof levels, Gramophone Works feels playful, functional, and adaptable. Contemporary in form and style, honest in material and construction methodology, it stands out through its respect to the urban fabric of its canal-side setting.
Highly Commended – Education Project of the Year – UCL Pearl
The Person Environment Activity Research Laboratory (PEARL) is UCL’s first net-zero carbon building, designed to test the effects on people in full-scale urban environments. Within the building, stands a steel portal frame and within that is a two-storey CLT and glulam structure called the ‘Groove’ that provides lab and office space. Offsite timber specialist B&K Structures constructed and delivered the steel frame and the engineered timber structure to an incredibly high level of accuracy, shortening the critical path and helping the project achieve academic acclaim and an ‘Outstanding’ BREEAM rating.
Designed as a reconfigurable space, the unique facility explores the ways in which people interact with their environment and is able to house life-sized simulated environments such as a train station or high street, creating controlled conditions in which to analyse people's interactions. B&K Structures were instrumental in the connection and member design to the timber elements and implemented innovative processes and techniques to maximise efficiency. The use of cross laminated timber panels and floors to be manufactured offsite to an exceptionally high level of accuracy and BIM was used to map out details such as predrilled holes within the CLT, for mechanical and electrical services.
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