Toureen Mangan needed me to capture several sites in short order; one in Luton, the others in London. After the briefing in London I headed for the first – The Luton Aquatic Centre, a clean and carefully laid out Wates site with good security, on the northern side of Luton.
The baths I believe are to be used by some of the foreign Olympic teams for training, and the bottom of the pool can be raised and lowered according to its useage. Again I believe it is designed for multi-usage beyond that of Swing and Diving.
The second day had me driving to the west of the London Congestion Charging Zone to Battersea, Fulham and Chelsea, which meant an exhaustive search for parking and a long trek back to the site to join my camera equipment and later a harder trudge with all the kit back to the car, but that was the second of the venues; the first that day was over Battersea Bridge to Howie Street, where parking less fraught and fractionally less expensive.
Toureen Mangan had done all the concrete work here at the new Dyson Building for the Royal College of Art, and their particular feature was the main staircase, so I captured this from several angles. Another aspect of the concrete work was in the Auditorium where they were proud of the ceiling work at the back, which I managed to capture despite the area being almost pitch-black – the exposure was twenty or so seconds!
City Basements a subsidiary within the Group were responsible for my next port of call in Cheyne Walk, a very cramped location where they were hard at shoring up and using their Silent Pile Driver in a process known as ‘Top Down’ – an increasingly popular method of working, adding space to Inner London buildings, something this company are justly proud of their skills at this process; it involves supporting the original structure whilst they first shore up the perimeter with Frodingham piling, then when that is complete removing the existing soil to make the void where the new space is created. When you look at the footprint of this particular plot it is hard to imagine bringing this amount of machinery into such a tiny area to carry out the work.
As can be seen there are some nice features inside and out that are worth preserving.
Next, was to take myself off to the edge of Hurlingham Park to Broomhouse Lane where a much larger area has been shored up with piling and the concrete base has been laid, and men were putting in water-sealing and welding was being carried out. I have tried to convey just how deep this hole went by showing the men alongside to give scale.
From the high vantage point of the Site Office, there will be an excellent view when they play polo here in a few weeks!
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