Replacing a number of old Victorian buildings, North Westminster will soon have a new community sports center offering an array of leisure facilities including two pools and an eight-court badminton hall.
Known as the Moberly Leisure Centre, the project, which is currently under construction in Kensal Rise, west London, also includes a substantial residential element known as Prime Place, which consists of 56 rooftop apartments and 15 townhouses.
Steel is playing a central role in the job as the leisure centre is a large steel-framed structure that supports light gauge steel-framed apartments above.
The project’s light gauge steel-framed apartments and their roof gardens are a mixture of one and two-bedroom apartments, containing either one or two bathrooms.
Rising to a maximum height of four levels, the apartments are in a stepped formation falling to a single level of units in the south and east of the project.
There are 30 different configurations of apartment and consequently their column lines seldom match the regular 6m × 6m column grid pattern in the leisure centre. As well as the light gauge framework, a total of 30t of hot-rolled steel columns have been used to form the apartments.
To support the irregular light steel frames, a transfer structure has been designed to sit between the leisure centre and the residences. Formed with a series of 4.6m-deep trusses, they vary in length, with the longest measuring 19m and weighing 14t.