A striking new structural glass façade, designed by Malishev Wilson Engineers (MWE) and featuring the artwork of artist Suzanna Heron, has been successfully installed at a new House of Fraser retail development in Bristol city centre.

The 14m-high façade, on one corner of the four-storey building situated in the merchants’ quarter of the city, allows views out from a coffee lounge area of the new store.

The glass façade comprises a total of 18 glass panels each weighing 480 kg. They were placed in three rows of four panels, each measuring 4.9m high and 2.4m wide on a south facing window; and in three rows of two panels measuring 4.9m high and 1.7m wide on an east facing surface.

As design engineers, MWE played a crucial role of supervision during the site installation phase of the project.

“We were present for all panel installation work to make sure the glass was installed strictly in accordance with the design specification”.

A night-time road closure was required for part of the installation work to allow access.

>> view the project page

October 2007
Walking on glass is the City style!

A stylish high level glass walkway is being built to link floor areas adjoining the two-storey atrium of a new office bock at 150 Cheapside in the City of London.

Malishev Wilson Engineers (MWE) have produced the detailed design for the walkway, under a concept conceived by Michael Aukett Architects. Specialist glass manufacture and supplier is F.A. Firman of Harold Wood, London. The 1.5m wide, 18m long walkway comprises glass floor panels supported on a grillage of glass beams, which in turn will be suspended from the concrete structure of the atrium by means of solid stainless steel rods. Total weight of the glass is approximately 12 tonnes and the walkway’s total loading is 32 tonnes, including the live load.

Due to the complex nature ofthe structure, MWE have used a state-of-the-art finite element analysis programme to evaluate stresses, deformation as well as natural frequency and response of the whole model.

The project is now reaching the final stage of analysis and site installation work is about to start. Completion of the walkway on site is expected by the end of the year.

October 2007
MWE featured in the
FINANCIAL TIMES

A magazine supplement in the Financial Times newspaper on ‘How to Spend It’, on adventurous designs in glass for residential properties, featured some of Malishev Wilson Engineers’ recent projects.

The article was published on Saturday 20th October, refered to three glass housing structures in France, to be built by F.A.Firman (Harold Wood) with French architect Odile Decq.

>> How to Spend it - 20 Oct 2007
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With land prices soaring due to the prolonged property boom, homeowners wanting to live in a larger property have discovered a simple but cost effective way of extending their homes - by digging out a basement.

Although building costs can be high, due to the need for ground support for existing walls, the net result is a property with more living space and a greatly enhanced value.

Malishev Wilson recently completed design work for a basement and ground floor glass extension at a 1930s home in Hertfordshire, in the Harpenden Conservation Area. Word went around and now MWE is involved in renovation and basement extension at a similar Thirties period house nearby.

A new build basement with a floor area of 150 sq m is being provided, with space for four extra rooms - a family cinema, games room, utilities area and storage. Digging out the 3m deep basement has involved extensive underpinnin of the house with reinforced concrete. The project went through a complicated two-stage planning application process because the house is in a conservation area. The local council needed reassurance about the safety aspects of ground engineering work on theproject and the prevention of subsidence – both while work is carried out and afterwards.

Architect: Crawford Partnership

Woking’s stunning looking new art gallery and museum, the Lightbox, has opened to the public. Built at a cost of £7 million, it features a cladding of silver and gold anodised aluminium and cedarwood tiles and a single storey, frameless structural glass façade at ground floor level. Malishev Wilson have been responsible for the structural design and detailing of the façade, working with glass manufacturer and supplier Fusion Glass.

Architects are Marks Barfield Architects, creators of the London Eye big wheel.

October 2007
Blast proof glass units at Heathrow’s new Terminal 5

Four and two person customer units are being provided in the Business Class lounge and shelving and glass screens sited in the First Class check-in lounge. All elements are designed to withstand crowd and explosive blast

Malishev Wilson Engineers have opened a new office in Paris to take advantage of a high construction workload currently being experienced in France. A growing use of structural steel there is also providing experienced UK engineers with good opportunities. Under the new company name of Malishev Wilson Ingeniere SARL, the new office is located at 14 Rue Oberkampf in central Paris.

It now establishes MWE’s presence in three countries – the UK, Russia and France. “Our experience as designers working with structural glass will be another attraction for French clients and their architects,” says Philip Wilson, MWI’s partner in charge of the new Paris office. “Authority approval and insurance for design work can sometimes prove difficult because the structural glass market in France is a few years behind that of the UK. But there is enormous potential here for working with this exciting material.”

MWI contact details:
Malishev Wilson Ingenierie SARL
14 rue Oberkampf
75011 Paris France
Tel: 0033 (0) 149 29 76 26
Fax: 0033 (0) 153 36 73 14
Mobile: 00 33 (0) 681 81 29 65

Malishev Wilson Engineers, together with architects 5th Studio and glass suppliers F.A.Firman, provided innovative solutions to help minimise the amount of fixings for the glass panels enclosing the rooms.

The large DGUs (double-glazed units), weighing up to 660kg each, are suspended from the ceiling. Special fixing details had to be adopted to transfer loads to the existing building. Standard point fixing details were therefore reconsidered and modified to accommodate the bigger loadings. MWE and F.A. Firman of Harold Wood in Essex jointly carried out a series of special load tests to verify the fixing design.

The existing Wolfson building, approximately 60m long, has two large open space volumes on each side of it – north and south. In order to create more space, without losing light, it was decided to enclose each of them with glass. As a result, two meeting rooms were created. Due to the building’s geometry, the glass panels had to be suspended from above. Some of the larger glazing units, measure 2.5m by 3.7m.

The big engineering design challenge on this project were the logistics of getting the glass units to the site for installation. The existing building, built in the 1960s, is surrounded on four sides

by other buildings from earlier periods. Some of these were as close as 2-3 m to the fabric of the Wolfson.

To make things even more complicated, The Wolfson Building is built on a type of podium 3-4 m high, with only one access road quite a distance away. So all materials and equipment had to be first lifted to the podium level, than trolleyed to the installation point. A special URW-A295CR crawler crane was used to lift panels into position.

The loads from the large double glazed units and other equipment had to be distributed over a certain area to minimise the ground pressure and protect existing pavement slabs. The crane used is the first crawler crane available in the UK that can pass through a standard door opening but has a lifting capacity of up to 3 tonnes.

Sept 2006
Malishev Wilson presenting their work in China

Malishev Wilson Engineers have been selected to present a paper entitled ‘The design and construction of all-glass structures’ for the International Association of Shell and Spatial Structures (IASS) symposium ‘New Olympics – New Shell and Spatial Structures’ - to take place in Beijing from October 16-19, 2006.

The paper will outline the experience gained from the design of a dozen all-glass structures – from glass stairs to glass roofs, with supporting beams spanning up to 12.0m, to external glass frames that are self-stable, each structure marking an important milestone in glass engineering and fabrication. The IASS, founded in 1959 by Eduardo Torroja, aims to achieve progress through an interchange of ideas among all those interested in lightweight structural systems such as lattice, tension, membrane and shell structures built from modern materials.

June 2006
MWE designing glass façade for Arts & Crafts museum in Woking

London glass supplier Fusion Glass Designs have appointed Malishev Wilson Engineers to carry out structural design and detailing - with the production of detailed design AUTOCAD drawings - for the external glazing to the south and east elevations of Woking Galleries, Woking Museum and Arts & Crafts Centre.

This will include the following elements :

• 30m long single storey frameless structurally bonded glass panels and a trapezoid shaped ‘keyhole’ window with 50% coverage of dichroic film interlayer in vertical stripes on the south elevation
• vertical slot and first and second floors with frosted glass with clear strips on the east elevation.

Architects are Marks Barfield Architects.