Hurlingham Racquet Centre’s light green roof features Kerto® LVL elements

The Hurlingham Club is a green oasis of tradition, renowned throughout the world as one of the largest private clubs. Adjacent to the Thames in Fulham, London, the Club provides to its members modern facilities and services among 42 acres of beautiful gardens.

The Racquet Centre, designed by David Morley Architects, has a sunken low-profile shape and a curved green sedum roof to minimize the environmental impact of the building.

Suspended beamspositioned far apart

The Hurlingham project involves the construction of a sports complex including four indoor tennis courts and four squash courts. The hall is 35 m wide and 55 m long. The main span consists of suspended steel beams. To give the courts space and reduce the cost of these complex beams, they are placed with large gaps of 12.9 meters. To fill these gaps, the architect wanted to see wood. Moreover, he demanded the construction a solid sound absorption to reduce reverberation in the hall.

The bottom plate again was made of a 20 millimeter Kerto® LVL Q-panels. However this is a special configuration of Q-panel called SONANS acoustics panels (perforation dia 10 @ 20 millimeters), with 50 millimeters of acoustic insulation internally within the panel allowing a high absorption coefficient required in the tennis hall (sound absorption coefficient: αw = 0.75- class C).

Lightweight Kerto LVL elements support heavy roof

The architect and principal engineering office Price & Myers sought an efficient, lightweight solution for the wide span. Traditional laminated timber, combined with a solid wooden panel on top of, was found to have a height of 1200 millimeters for the beams, which was much too high.

The engineers at Price & Myers contacted Metsä Wood to look at a design with a shallower construction for the roof, but that would still accommodate the large span and heavy green roof. Following a joint design effort, they agreed a roof design with Kerto LVL elements. These elements are made from Kerto LVL using structural gluing. With any other material, trusses would have had to be more densely spaced.

The Kerto LVL elements constitute the vaulted roof construction are 12.9 meters long and have a total height of 645 mm and maximum width of 1200 millimeters. To accommodate the curve of the structure four different widths were determined 550 mm, 600 mm 700 mm, and 1200 mm, totalling 140 prefabricated Kerto LVL elements. The roof elements fit flush with the vaulted, spaced, bowstring steel truss. To get the steel element the same depth as the Kerto LVL elements (645 millimeters), the steel manufacturer was heavily involved.

Detailed steel to timber connections

With the arch in the roof, the supports and the installation process had to be considered at design stage in order not to have avoid difficulties any problems during while the erection of the roof.

In the first design team meeting with the contractor, architect, engineers and steel manufacturers, it became clear that the complex shape and the long span of the roof would require close collaboration of all team members.

The depth of the Kerto LVL elements determined the depth of the curved steel member, as the steel had to be flush with the elements to accommodate the green roof structure above. The connection detail between the Kerto LVL element and the steel element had to therefore be very carefully designed.

The BIM models that the steel manufacturer and Metsä Wood exchanged also allowed for all the connectors in the steel to be visible, so the panels could be modified to allow for installation and connection without problems on site.

Summary
Products used	Kerto LVL
Applications	Special applications, Wooden elements, Offsite construction
Country	United Kingdom
Type	Sports facilities
Client	Hurlingham Club
Building year	2016
Architectural design	David Morley Architects
Structural design	Price & Myers