The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) is a renowned and world-leading horticultural organization. In November 2015, the RHS announced the creation of a new garden area on the 154-acre Worsley Hall Estate. This will make the RHS Garden Bridgewater the largest of its kind in Europe and a magnet for around 700,000 visitors a year.
Entrance gate to the gardens
At the beginning, the English architecture firm Hodder + Partners was commissioned to design a new ‘Welcome Building’ (visitor center), which will serve as a gateway to the gardens as well as a meeting and interaction point. The Welcome Building is designed as an open space that allows visitors to move flexibly and barrier-free between the various functions and uses such as ticket sales, education center, retail area, cafeteria and plant sales. The ‘Welcome Building’ unites all these functions under a large vaulted wooden roof. Each room can therefore be used flexibly according to seasonal requirements. The ‘Welcome Building’ was delivered by BAM as general contractor, with HESS TIMBER responsible for the engineering, production, delivery and assembly of the load-bearing timber construction elements.
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More InformationModular roof construction
The roof structure of the ‘Welcome Building’ consists of three different timber construction elements: the ‘cigar-shaped’ glulam supports, modular cassette elements with diagonally arranged inner lattices and outer glulam rafters and cross-laminated timber elements as a roof finish and to reinforce the individual cassettes with each other. The polished ‘cigar-shaped’ glulam supports rest on a total of 16 reinforced concrete supports and measure 3.85 m in length and 300 mm in width (in the middle). A special feature is the shape of the glulam columns, which tapers to 200 mm on both sides towards the end, ensuring an attractive and filigree overall appearance of the roof structure. The glulam supports are structurally relevant and support the entire roof, which measures 2,160 m² in total. The roof structure itself consists of individual cassettes. These divide the entire roof into individual grids thanks to their modular structure.
Each individual cassette measures 6.00 m on the long edge and 3.00 m on the short edge. The cassettes consist of diagonally arranged inner lattices and straight outer rafters, which provide stability and bracing for the entire roof structure. This linear grid structure results in roof dimensions of 24 m (8 x 3) in width and 90 m (15 x 6) in length. Natural light penetrates the building both through the large skylights and through a curtain wall made of Siberian larch wood.
Sustainable architecture
Sustainability is at the heart of the design and is also anchored in the daily work of RHS. The building therefore features integrated rainwater harvesting, green roofs, geothermal heat pumps, underfloor heating and cooling and natural cross ventilation. The visually impressive use of wood as the primary material for the roof construction is a constant reminder of the sustainable objectives for this special building. The wood used binds around 350 tons of carbon into the structure of the building. The ‘Welcome Building’ was designed as a complementary intervention in the landscape and offers the RHS and future visitors an exceptionally sustainable building of the highest quality.
