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Wednesday, October 20, 2010 |
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Freedom Park - combining conventional with the unconventional
:: News
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Source: Danie Moolman
Stefanutti Stocks Building Gauteng is in a 70/30 JV with Fikile Projects to construct the “Phase 2A” section of The
Freedom Park in Pretoria. Our Client is “The Freedom Park”, a Government funded Cultural Institution.
The facility, entitled //HAPO (The Dream) includes an exhibition area, a restaurant, conference facilities, a curio shop and a kiosk.
//HAPO is best described as a “structure”, housing permanent and temporary exhibitions depicting the past 3.2 million years’ of southern African history. The exhibitions depicting this history will be sub-divided in six epochs, namely Earth, Ancestors, Colonization, Industrialization, The Struggle and Nation Building.
The structure is made up of a conventional concrete frame on numerous different levels, connected by a series of ramps and staircases. From there, a very unconventional structural steel frame is clad with a build-up of acoustic layers, top-hats, shutter boards, a slip sheet, a breather layer and finally copper.
“The whole building, roof and facades, is clad in pure copper!” says Danie Moolman, contracts manager for the project. “Like roof sheets, the copper is brought to site in coils weighing between 500 - 1 000kg each, and rolled into sheets which are then fixed to the sub-structure”.
The structure is designed to depict six boulders protruding from the side of the hill. The inside of the building is also
designed to give the feeling of being inside caves and, like the exterior, is also put together with many unusual shapes and sizes that have been formed with dry-wall partitioning, ceilings and bulkheads.
In addition to //HAPO, we are constructing a 1.6km long elevated spiral path made up of a structural steel frame and a timber walk way on the north and east slopes of The Freedom Park hill (old Salvokop). A strict Environmental Management Plan must be followed, making access a challenge. “We have needed to build a scaffold walkway along the route to enable access,” says Danie. “We transport the material for the construction of the walk-way via wheelbarrows and ‘hands’ - not a mean feat when this consists of around 70 ton of structural steel, 3 500m2 timber
decking and 400m3 of concrete!”
Other elements making this an extremely interesting and challenging project include the shaped windows and shop fronts; a “maze” of timber crate finish landscape walls; some interesting water features; 850 linear meters of “designer” gabions; and sloped- and splayed face brick walls.
This project started in July 2008 with bush clearing, excavation of 33 000m3 of material and lateral support to form
the three major terraces. The first concrete was cast in September 2008 and completion is scheduled for
March 2010.
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