Steel Construction in Leicester: Built to Win
Leicester is a city that has long punched above its weight: a Premier League title for the Foxes and Welford Road, home of Leicester Tigers, keeps on growing. The city centre is also steadily being redeveloped.
Behind much of the city’s winning ambition is the use of structural steel. Here are four Leicester construction projects that show how it’s done.
Leicester City FC Training Centre
Building on the success of its 2015/16 title-winning season, Leicester City set out to create one of the largest training facilities in the UK at Seagrave, located on a former golf course and fishing centre north of the city in Charnwood.
Its centrepiece is a signature steel-framed building housing a full-size indoor pitch, and the whole development used around 1,700 tonnes of steel.
The roof was formed from 13 arched steel trusses supporting a box section diagrid, and the building is partly sunk into grass embankments so that it blends into the surrounding landscape. Because the steel could be erected ahead of the concrete retaining walls, it saved valuable for the programme, while the design absorbed construction tolerances between the two materials.
Hotel Brooklyn, Welford Road
Across town, Leicester Tigers' home ground has been expanding for years, and Hotel Brooklyn is its latest addition. The £22 million scheme is on a 1.7-acre plot that was once occupied by the Granby Halls entertainment complex.
Structurally, the hotel and its car park form one large steel frame on piled foundations up to 14m deep, with stability coming from moment frames and discreetly placed bracing. The V-shaped building opens out towards the stadium, and one interesting aspect is that the steelwork contractor had previously supplied the steel for one of Welford Road's stands.
Colton Square in the New Business Quarter
Turning away from sport, steel has also helped regenerate Leicester’s city centre. Colton Square was the first phase of the much larger New Business Quarter, delivering Leicester's first speculative office building: a four-storey, 50,000 sq ft steel frame.
Notably, the site was a difficult one for building on. Indeed, the building's footprint took up most of the plot, with a semi-basement car park already excavated beneath it and a ground-floor slab that couldn't carry heavy loads. The steelwork team worked around this by using lightweight electric cherry-pickers and a single 120-tonne mobile crane, positioned in one spot to reach the entire site for the whole construction period.
City of Leicester College
The city's schools have relied on steel too. City of Leicester College, delivered under the Building Schools for the Future programme, called for roof overhangs, cantilevered corridors, drama halls and a feature entrance, all on a quick and cost-efficient programme.
All of the steelwork was erected in just 12 weeks and replicating the design over two floors sped things up further. Just as importantly, the simple steel frame can adapt to changing educational needs and future expansion.
The same logic applied at Leicester Grammar School's move to a new purpose-built site at Great Glen, where 800 tonnes of steel was erected over a three-month programme. The project team explained that steel enabled them to get a watertight envelope up quickly while keeping costs in balance.
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