Located within the UNESCO World Heritage Lake District, the eco-friendly educational building has been designed to blend into the landscape and minimise visual impact on lake Windermere.

Covering a floor area of 3,000m2 over two floors, the new school and youth centre enables the YMCA to continue offering life changing experiences for future generations to come.

The structure comprises a braced steel frame to maximise future flexibility. The floor and roof plate both utilised a composite concrete metal deck, which acted as a diaphragm to transfer lateral loads to strategically located vertical braced bays.

To minimise visual impact on the surrounding scenic area, the roof has been designed to accommodate an intensive green roof system: a driving factor in utilising the composite concrete metal deck at roof level.

Curtins carried out a detailed drainage design to minimise flood risk.

Our intrusive ground investigation found that the site was partially located over an old river bed. To overcome this complexity, a mix of tailored foundation types were used. Over the old river bed area, piled foundations, ground beams and suspended concrete ground floor slabs were specified, but outside of the river bed competent rock strata allowed a more traditional pad foundation and ground bearing slab solution to be utilised.

The overall structural solution was designed to maximise flexibility and adaptability for potential change of use in the future.

Key points:

• Mixed foundation design that was tailored to the varying ground conditions.
• Sensitive design to blend with surrounding area.

Image courtesy of Cassidy + Ashton