71/72 Kingsway

Schöck thermal breaks and new dowels for major Swansea office development

A major high-tech office development in Swansea, known as 71/72 Kingsway, will provide 114,000 sq.ft. of office networking space for 600 jobs in the digital and creative sector. The detailing required thermal insulation of the highest standard, along with high-performance expansion joints. The main issue was the retaining wall in the basement and ground floor areas, which put axial pres-sure onto the structural Isokorb thermal breaks. It was necessary to calculate both the compression force and the moment resistance based on the residual capacity of the in-situ thermal breaks. At the second and third floors, the column grid placement was unconventional and converse to usual, so the elements were installed in the opposite direction to what would normally be anticipated. To combat effects of thermal bridging throughout the RC construction, a variety of Isokorb thermal breaks are incorporated, but the most extensively used are the T type K and the XT type K. There were a number of large beam forces to transfer on the upper levels and the new Stacon dowels were used for the first time in the UK. The type SLD, is really compact and the anchoring bodies ha-ve been reduced in size, so it has the advantage of enabling higher loads to be installed in thinner slabs and walls. Stacon has been awarded UK Technical Assessment (UKTA) along with fire protection classification R 120. It is fully supported with Scalix design software too, the first web-based application for the design of shear dowels.