News
April 2008
Malishev Wilson Engineers joins The Engineering Club
The Engineering Club was established over 15 years ago for local engineering firms to promote engineering for engineers and those committed to the built environment. A series of events are organised at The Building Centre and offers a chance to meet with engineers and professionals in other disciplines in the built environment to hear about the broader culture of engineering. The Club’s history includes such distinguished speakers as Sir Clive Sinclair, Mike Burrows, Trevor Baylis and Wing Commander Ken Wallis. The Engineering Club is a vibrant community for practices to meet, socialise and develop their knowledge of current topics in the field.
>> Visit
engineeringclub.org.uk for more info
March
2008
Structural glass façade in Bristol city centre
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 walkways 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
PDF 677 KB
October
2007
Ground engineering is key to basement extension
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
October
2007
Structural glass façade adorns Woking’s new art gallery
Wokings 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 Heathrows new Terminal
5
MWE has been brought in to handle the structural design aspects
of some glass plated customer service units at Heathrows
new Terminal 5 building.
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
May
2007
MWI opens new office in Paris
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
Feb 2007
Lighting glass feature was successfully accomplished at 10 Queen
Street Place
The building is on the junction with Upper Thames Street
and Queen Street Place is designed by HOK architects. The comprehensive
refurbishment of the building included the creation of new office
accommodation on level four, including a landscaped roof terrace
overlooking the River Thames.
Sept 2006
Hanging glass meeting rooms complete at Trinity College, Cambridge
New hanging glass meeting rooms, a central feature of recent refurbishment
work on The Wolfson Building at Trinity College, Cambridge, have
been successfully installed following some carefully designed access
methods and procedures on this confined site.
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 buildings 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.
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