Located adjacent to the 70m-high
medieval Christchurch spire, one of
the city’s historical landmarks, the
Coventry Water Park and Leisure
Pool facility will provide a high-quality
destination that is accessible to everyone and
will act as a catalyst for further regeneration.
The £36M project will house a water park
with a range of slides, a lazy river, wave pool,
day spa, 25m-long swimming pool, 120
station gym, dance studio and squash courts.
The building will be dramatically lit at
night and sits next to Coventry’s ambitious
City Centre South project which will
transform the retail offering during the
coming years.
With the exception of the area adjacent
to the spire, the project footprint is almost
entirely bounded by busy roads and
consequently the facility has been designed
to fully occupy the constrained city centre
site, which has resulted in the building’s
distinctive shape. The upper parts of the
centre are housed in a circular drum-shaped
structure, while lower down the ground and
first floors are accommodated within a more
rectangular shaped plinth.
With very little room for materials storage
or plant equipment, the site is served by
two entrances and a roadside laydown area.
With no on-site tower crane, all lifting duties
are being performed by a variety of mobile
cranes, brought to site individually when
needed.
Billington Structures used mobile cranes
up to and including a 250t-capacity unit
for the steel erection. With so little room to
manoeuvre, the company erected the entire
frame by working in a circular manner,
infilling wedges and ending up putting in
the last steelwork adjacent to where it had
begun.
Overall the structure houses the main
25m swimming pool, squash courts, plant
areas and spa within its ground floor, while
above the first floor accommodates the gym,
changing rooms, further plant areas and a
kid’s splash pool.
Moving up the structure into the
cylindrical part, the second storey is in fact
two floors with one lower level providing
the base for the wave pool, lazy river and
associated balance tanks. The main level two
is then the pool surround where many of
the rides culminate, and from where visitors
ascend twin staircases leading upwards to
the top of the steel-framed ride tower, which
is where the six rides begin.
Apart from a facetted curved perimeter,
the lower floor levels are formed with a
steel frame containing exposed bespoke
plate girder beams with cellular holes. The
deep cellular beams provide the necessary
stiffness to support pool tanks and control
the dynamic response of the gym, while
the holes have been principally designed to
accommodate the many services required
for the building.
“The connection nodes to the steel
frame beneath the pool hall are working
particularly hard as they support the high
vertical load from the pools, and are also
designed as stiff moment connections in two
directions to control deflection and prevent
cracking of the pool tanks,” says engenuiti
Associate Ian Hamilton.
The cylindrical drum rises to a height
of 19m to give the building its overall 28m
height. This upper part houses a large
column-free zone, with a massive span of
52m formed by a rooftop diagrid of inclined
steel tubular trusses.
This open area will house the slides, with
the largest standing 14.6m high and the
other measuring in the region of 11.5m. All
of these water slides will be hung from the
roof trusses, meaning the steelwork is not
just spanning a large area it is also picking
Leisure
Steel makes a splash
Coventry’s city centre Water Park project has overcome
a number of obstacles including a confined site and a
challenging steelwork design.
FACT FILE
Coventry Water Park &
Leisure Pool
Main client:
Coventry City Council
Architect:
FaulknerBrowns
Architects
Main contractor:
Buckingham Group
Structural engineer:
engenuiti
Steelwork contractor:
Billington Structures
Steel tonnage: 1,200t
The project will provide
a new city landmark
for Coventry
16 NSC
March 18
Model showing the
steel frame and
foundations
/Retail_buildings
/Construction#Tower_cranes
/Fabrication#Handling_and_transportation
/Construction#Mobile_cranes
/Construction#Steel_erection
/Braced_frames
/Steel_construction_products#Plate_girders
/Steel_construction_products#Cellular_beams
/Moment_resisting_connections
/Trusses