Regent Plaza

This large residential development will see the provision of over 500 apartments and town houses on a prominent site adjacent Regent Road in Salford. The accommodation will be provided by a series of five buildings ranging from 5 storeys to 26 storeys surrounding a two-level car park and piazza.

It is anticipated that all buildings will be provided with a steel frame which may be supplemented by a concrete core to give additional stability for the taller structures.

Block B, on the corner of Duncan Street and Oldcastle Road, was the first to be designed and this particular block rises to ten storeys with each floor being constructed using composite decking reinforced with fibre-reinforced concrete.

Stability to the building is provided by substantial cross bracing with all vertical and horizontal loads taken into the CFA piles which provide the foundation solution.

The external cladding is to be solid brickwork and this needs support via Ancon brackets that are fixed to the edge beams. These needed to be coordinated with the service openings that have been required to penetrate the web of the beams due to the shallow floor to floor heights.

Block C is of a similar construction to Block B although is only 8 storeys in height. Therefore, the design principles remain the same for this block in the use of composite floor slabs, steel frame and cross bracing for stability.

Block D is a modified construction given the height being split level either side of a concrete core. The taller side rises to 18 storeys with the shorter side being 14 storeys. The concrete core is to receive cast in plates to allow the construction of the steel frame around the pre-erected core which is likely to slip formed. Designing the steel frames we utilised S460 columns, a higher than normal strength classification, to enable smaller, more appropriate, column sizes to be used. Whilst these may be more expensive they allowed smaller, and lighter, columns to be used, mitigating the increased material cost.

All the block are to be constructed around a central car park area which has a ground floor parking area together with a first floor parking facility. The roof of the car park is to form a communal piazza area with grassed, paved and landscaped areas.

The car park construction is again to used composite floor construction with long span beam sections to ensure a column free environment. Beams are typically 15.6m long and the complexities of this particular element of the project revolved around control of the deflections, the limited floor to floor height and maintaining level access at first and second floor levels. Some of this was resolved by pre-cambering the long span beams to reduce the deflection and installing the beams on a modest slope to achieve the level access.

Block A and E will form the final parts of the development, on the frontage to Oldfield Road and Regent Road respectively. Block A is again proposed to be split level around a concrete core and will rise, at a maximum height, to 26 storeys.