Zaha Hadid’s Riverside Museum wins European Museum Academy Micheletti Award 2012

in Architecture by editor — 3:48 pm | May 9, 20120 comments

Riverside Museum, Glasgow has been named the most innovative museum in the fields of technology, labour and social history by the European Museum Academy. Riverside competed against museums in 12 other European countries to win the 17th annual Micheletti Award. In their citation, the judges noted that: “The careful planning of the museum included involving visitors and volunteers at every stage of the development.” The judges concluded: “The museum has put its budget and its large workforce to excellent use, it is completely publicly oriented, flexible and always on the outlook. It is making a change to a rundown neighbourhood, as well as being a showcase of past, present and future transport industries of Glasgow.”

© H+C

Lawrence Fitzgerald, Riverside Museum Manager said: “The judges were particularly impressed by the relationships the museum had built up with people before, during and after opening and by the range of stories told at Riverside.” Riverside Museum has already attracted more than 1.4million visitors since opening in June. We publish an article about this event here.

© Alan McAteer

© Alan McAteer

The Riverside Museum provides a new exciting environment in which to showcase Glasgow’s rich and varied transport heritage. The form of the roof structure is roughly z-shaped in plan with structural mullions at each end that not only support the roof, but also allow the glazed end façades to be supported without the need for any secondary members. In section the roof is a series of continuous ridges and valleys that constantly vary in height and width from one gable to the other with no two lines of rafters being geometrically the same. Generally the cross section is a pitched portal frame with a multi pitched rafter spanning between the portal and a perimeter column. There are also curved transition areas where the roof changes direction in plan.

© H+C

© H+C

The rafters themselves are not straight in plan but a series of facets that change direction in each valley. To accommodate these changes in line and to facilitate the connection of any incoming bracing and other members, the rafters at the ridges and valleys are joined at the surface of a cylindrical ‘can’. The majority of these ‘cans’ were truly vertical in the preset geometry of the roof, however where the relative slopes either side of the ridge orvalley would have generated inordinately long oblique cuts the ‘cans’ were inclined to bisect the angle between adjacent rafters.

© Helene Binet

© Helene Binet

The diameter of most of the ‘cans’ was able to be standardised but, in cases of extreme geometry or where the sheer number of incoming members dictated, a larger diameter had to be used to allow all the incoming members to be welded directly to the ‘can’ wall. The most complicated valley connection had 10 incoming members that necessitated the use of a 1.0m diameter ‘can’ over 1.5m tall. By using vertical ‘cans’ in the valley positions a standard connection between the tops of the tubular support props and the roof structure was designed. This consisted of a thick circular base plate to the ‘can’ with a blind M24 tapped hole in its centre, thus allowing an 80mm diameter tapered shear pin to be bolted directly to the base of the ‘can’.

© ZHA

© ZHA

The accuracy of fabrication was achieved by using a combination of shop jigs and EDM setting out techniques. All the complex rafter members were assembled in shop jigs whilst the geometry of the more simple members was set using EDM’s that were able to set the positions of certain critical splice connection holes. This was made possible by adding virtual “wires” through the centres of some of the holes during the X-Steel modelling. These wires allowed the EDM operator to check its end position in space when a circular prism was placed in the hole. Using this technology it was possible to accurately position the remote end of a steel member to ± 2mm in any direction.

The more complex members were assembled using shop jigs. These jigs were created by extracting a single member (assembly) from the X-Steel model, rotating it in space to create a single reference plane and then modelling in a secondary steelwork “frame” that the individual pieces (fittings) of the assembly could either be supported on or bolted to. The whole of the building structure is supported on piles with none of the slabs having been designed as ground bearing. The columns are generally founded on individual pile caps with the slab spanning between individual piles so to allow the erection of the roof to be carried out from within the footprint of the building. The ground floor slab was designed to accommodate multiple 10.0 tonne loads at a minimum of 1.8m centres.

Tags: cultural education featured ftnews Glosgow museum public facilities Scotland Zaha Hadid Architects