The Watershed - Architect and Builder Magazine South Africa

PROJECT
The Watershed
The project was conceptualised as a collection of individual
buildings under the cover of the existing shed, thus approaching
sustainability through a passive design strategy
THE WATERSHED
V&A Waterfront, Cape Town
DEVELOPER/CLIENT
V & A Waterfront
ARCHITECTS
Wolff Architects
QUANTITY SURVEYORS
Pentad Quantity Surveyors
STRUCTURAL ENGINEERS
LH Consulting Engineers
ELECTRICAL ENGINEERS
GIBB
MECHANICAL ENGINEERS
Basil Nair & Associates
WSP Group Africa
FIRE CONSULTANTS
SolutionStation
ACOUSTIC CONSULTANTS
Mackenzie Hoy Consulting
Engineers
T
he V&A Waterfront’s newest mixed-use development, the Watershed, has been
open to the public since October 2014. The building was historically an electrical
warehouse and, in more recent years, was divided up into the Blue Shed craft
market on the one side and the Maritime Museum on the other. The Maritime Museum
then moved and the space was sitting vacant.
DEVELOPER’S REPORT
The V&A Waterfront was looking to increase the footfall in a traditionally scarce area of
the precinct and increasing trading density for the market traders. The V&A approached
architect, Heinrich Wolff, to look at the space. Wolff proposed not only using the vacant
space, but knocking through to the Blue Shed and re-envisaging the space completely.
The V&A supported this idea and the Watershed concept was born.
South African cities are becoming increasingly segregated and compartmentalised.
The Watershed is a contribution to better city-making. The design concept stemmed
from the intention to create a sustainable urban condition that supports a market
economy. This is done by the creation of a street through the workshop, thereby linking
the aquarium to the rest of the V&A Waterfront. This urban gesture offers substantial
benefit to the surrounding context, creating opportunities for other urban role players
to benefit from. The buildings inside the shed address the pedestrian street with a 50m x
50m columnless, suspended steel structure flying over the street, releasing the potential
activities of the street.
ENVIRONMENTAL
CONSULTANTS
Greenbuild Consultants
ELEVATOR CONSULTANTS
Solutions for Elevating
WIND CONSULTANT
Adam Goliger
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT
Julian Raxworthy
LAND SURVEYOR
David Hellig & Abrahamse
WORKSHOP 17 – INTERIOR
ARCHITECTS
Metropolis Design
MAIN CONTRACTOR
WBHO Construction
TEXT
V & A Waterfront
Mackenzie Hoy Consulting
Engineers
PHOTOGRAPHY
Marc Hoberman
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The Watershed
The Watershed
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With the building being
more of a “street”,
the building is able to
make use of natural
ventilation in the
majority of the space
The pedestrian street created through the
Watershed creates a vital urban connection
between the main active area around the
shopping centre precinct and the Clock
Tower Precinct on the one side and the
aquarium, the bus stop, the GSB campus and
new BRT stops on the other. Wolff Architects
designed what has been dubbed ”the floating
floor” – a suspended structure that makes a
50m x 50m gridded steel slab over the market.
The floating floor meant that the activity of
the street below could be complemented
by another type of space, running
perpendicularly overhead. This substantially
increases the diversity and intensity of human
interaction in the street.
The Offering
The ground floor of the building is now home
to some 150 small business owners selling a
multitude of arts and crafts, representing over
365 local brands. This is complemented by a
Wellness offering upstairs – contributing a
range of treatments for the mind, body and
soul. The consolidation of the Blue Shed and
Red Shed traders into one space provided
valuable retail space within the Victoria Wharf
for the introduction of new international
retail offerings.
A 1,000m2 exhibition space over two
floors attracts locals to the V&A with a
peak visitor flow of 500 per hour. The space
hopes to be home to some of the top exhibitions in the world, with Art of the Brick being
the first exhibition.
The final element to the Watershed is the
soon to be completed Workshop 17 offering
on the first and second floors. Workshop 17,
operated by Open Workspaces, will be a social
innovation and co-working space, offering a
desk rental model with communal working
facilities which will tap into a new model
for small and start-up businesses, bringing
diversity to the V&A Waterfront.
Technical
The project was conceptualised as a collection
of individual buildings under the cover of the
existing shed, thus approaching sustainability
through a passive design strategy. Therefore
the majority of the building is treated as an
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The Watershed
The ground floor of the
building is now home
to some 150 small
business owners selling
a multitude of arts and
crafts, representing
over 365 local brands
external condition with natural ventilation and
lighting, hugely reducing the services required.
Services are predominantly grouped together
in easily accessible locations ensuring simple
access for maintenance. Existing conditions
were embraced throughout the building
with original floor trenches being used for
electrical reticulation throughout the groundfloor. All the services throughout the building
are exposed and clearly identifiable therefore
The Watershed
simplifying the maintenance of the various
service runs.
The building was designed as a space for
creativity. Research revealed that, in order
to stimulate creativity, individual’s required
personal workspace combined with a sense of
transparency. The large amounts of glazing,
tiered sections and floor cut-outs promote
a visual connectivity over multiple levels at a
distance. The new intervention into the shed
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predominantly uses steel which reflects and
is in keeping with the original shed structure.
The efficiency of steel allowed for services,
acoustic treatment and structural elements to
all fit within a 550mm deep floor, allowing for
3 levels inside the shed. Drywalls were mainly
used for the enclosure of space, allowing for a
change in the building’s use over time. Steel
is treated as permanent whilst enclosures
are treated as impermanent and therefore
adaptable over time.
Success since Opening
Consolidating the two adjacent spaces
translated into a trading space 50% larger
that is able to accommodate a wider product
offering from small business owners. The
Watershed can be seen as a talent incubator
and the unique design of the building and
resulting pedestrian street has increased
the footfall, giving tenants exposure to the
millions of local and international visitors the
V&A Waterfront welcomes annually. It has
given the V&A the opportunity to build on
its established small business platform for
further economic growth.
The V&A have been overwhelmed with
how well the Watershed has performed
since opening. The ground floor market
has been a huge success– evidenced by
increased revenue and footfall - and has been
well received by the public. Interest in the
Workshop 17 innovation space, even though
it is not yet complete, has been high and it
appears that everybody wants to be a part of
this unbelievable space.
Sustainability
Sustainability is a core value underpinning
the V&A Waterfront. Although the Watershed
building does not have a green star rating,
it does have elements of green building
incorporated. For example, the re-use of the
existing structure (historical and electrical
SECTION
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The Watershed
warehouse) and re-use of some of the existing
gum pole flooring from when the building was
an electrical warehouse.
With the building being more of a “street”,
the building is able to make use of natural
ventilation in the majority of the space, with
mechanical ventilation in the exhibition,
meeting room and commercial areas. The
space also promotes an enhanced indoor
environmental quality – with plenty of natural
light, access to views, acoustic separation
between the various building uses, and the
use of low VOC paints. Other sustainable
initiatives include LED lighting, universal
access, water metering, recycling waste
storage & an efficient fit-out.
ACOUSTIC CONSULTANT’S COMMENT
Heinrich Wolff, James Pierre du Plessis
and Adam Clemens of Wolff Architects
called Mackenzie Hoy Consulting Acoustics
Engineers (aka “Machoy”) and asked for
acoustics and noise control input on a revamp
of the Blue Shed and Workshop 17 building at
the Waterfront, Cape Town. It had occurred
to the architects that the buildings housed
an overhead crane gantry, rated at some
tonnes. This implied that if the building
structure could take the side force of a gantry
crane, then the building could be fitted with
a mezzanine floor, suspended on cables. If
you then removed the walls at either end of
the building, you get a new building open
to pedestrian traffic, double volume, 100 m
long skylight, an astonishing massive hanging
floor, 150 traders stalls, 1,000m2 of exhibitions
space with windows overlooking a busy
working drydock where metal shot blasting of
ships is common.
The Watershed
In short, in terms of acoustics and noise
control, you get every single problem relating
to acoustics and noise which a building can
have: Double volumes are big and echo rich
with conversation stopping and market noise
enhancing properties. Skylights are great
for light, and let in outside noise; massive
hanging floors can resonate and resonate
until a few foot falls sound like the steps of an
approaching hippo and then, of course, there
is the outside noise of the Robinson drydock
where they remove paint from ships using
steel shot air-blasted onto the hull of the drydocked ship and which sounds just like steel
shot air-blasted..etc etc, only louder.
Machoy Senior Engineer (Acoustics), Rachel
Viljoen, was given the project and provided
solutions to all of the issues. Particularly
innovative was the use of Marmoleum
Decibel vinyl floor on the mezzanine deck
which provided both footfall and resonance
control of the hanging floor as well and sound
absorption for the double volume. The use
of Gyptone Ringitone plasterboard further
solved many of the acoustics problems.
Noise from the ground floor traders was
also controlled by specialised absorber
panels; however, control is not 100% since
budget issues saw a number of acoustic
recommendations being discarded. However,
the result is still very, very good. First prize to
Wolff Architects for the concept design and
clever insight into the mezzanine support.
Special rosette to structural engineer, Tom
Linder, who designed the floor suspension
and, when Machoy asked what the floor
resonant frequency was, he knew the
answer and it was right. From Blue Shed and
Workshop to Watershed.
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