Vision Modular Systems - Grand Felda House
Project Details
Project - Grand Felda House, Wembley
Client - Treax Innovations Ltd
Architect - HTA Design LLP
Structural Engineer - Barrett Mahoney
M&E / Sustainability Engineer - MTT Ltd / HTA Design LLP
Planning Consultant - HTA Design LLP
Project Manager / Cost Consultant - Tide Construction Ltd
Contractor - Tide Construction Ltd
Project Overview
Grand Felda House is a 22,360m2 (16,573m2 of which was delivered in modular form) development in Wembley, North London near to the Wembley Stadium. It consists of 802 student housing units and a two storey leisure centre containing a 25m swimming pool, exercise rooms and changing facilities. The leisure centre and the student amenities are over two floors that cover the entire site housed in a basement and ground floor structure, with the podium roof forming a landscaped recreation area. The student accommodation is arranged in two parallel buildings, one nine storeys on Empire Way and one eighteen storeys at the rear of the site. The ground floor on Empire Way contains the entrance to the leisure centre and to the student housing which will animate the Wembley streetscape.
The building creates a variety of room types and shapes suitable for different students including wheelchair units, and a variety of shared social spaces including a cinema room, a games room, a prayer room, an amenity courtyard with trees and seating areas to allow for relaxation, and common rooms on each floor for social interaction and group study. Laundry rooms are provided in multiple locations.
The project was completed in August 2016 ahead of the student intake in September 2016. The construction programme from site clearance to practical completion was over an elapsed 14 month period. This is at least a year quicker than could be managed using traditional methods of construction and confirms the logistical and financial benefits of offsite construction for building rented developments.
The façade was been applied using mast climbers after the modules were installed, and spanned a variety of rain screen cladding systems from brick slip panels, aluminium cladding infill panels and Glass-Reinforced Concrete with rendered elevations for the ends of the student housing buildings. The facades are primarily dark bricks with a complex pattern of blended types, the rendered end elevations are a light grey and there are brightly coloured aluminium projecting screens to provide variation to the facades and to provide local solar shading.
The scale of the completed Grand Felda building with its range of amenities, external facades, and speed of build provide an excellent example of the power of modular construction allied to collaborative working and integrated teams. Without these 3 foundation blocks the project would not have been delivered successfully in the time available.
