St Pancras Station
St Pancras station, which still holds its 19th century features of cast iron pillars and Victorian brick arches aims to redefine railway stations into the 21st century. St Pancras station will be a key destination for the Eurostar high speed rail services, and has also become a retail and leisure destination offering Europe’s longest champagne bar, many individual boutiques and high class restaurants. It will play a major role in transporting spectators to the 2012 Olympic Games and with it’s 9 metre high statue of a meeting couple, aims to become London’s premier meeting place.
OAG are proud to have completed the design and installation of glass on two major contracts in the grade 1 listed St Pancras station in central London. The culmination of the £800 million refurbishment, Britain’s largest project of this nature for over 100 years, was officially opened by the Her Majesty the Queen in early November
The architectural and civil engineering challenges of this project were to merge the refurbishment of a 19th century building to a 21st century extension.
OAG were contracted for the design development, to a high quality architectural intent, and deliver bespoke solutions retaining the architects' individuality, and installing these into the complicated Victorian structure. With a final contract value in excess of £16,000,000, five years of design and project management, the final result is both breathtaking and a benchmark for future projects where old meets new. OAG utilised many resources of the Optima Group with in house design, labour, fabrication and supplies of stainless steel fittings as well as outsourced items from within their UK and European supply chain.
OAG were awarded a contract by CTRL in 2002 and worked closely with architects Rail Link Engineering, led by Alistair Lansley to provide a glazing package which comprised of balustrades, glass smoke barriers, travelator enclosures and a 3 metre high ‘restricted zone’ platform screen the length of the original Barlow Shed. Having to allow for structural deflections of ±40mm, English Heritage restrictions on how we could connect to the existing building fabric, OAG eventually drilled out over 1000 rivets in the cast iron supports for attaching new fixings for installation of the new glass assemblies. With many of these assemblies being hung from the platform deck, both the movement tolerances, linked with out of plumb cast iron pillars found in the Undercroft area which supports the platforms and train deck. The design and installation procedure was an ever moving process involving some brilliant engineered solutions. The project management team dealt with complicated site procedures and at its peak over 70 site personnel but the contract was delivered on time and to the satisfaction of the design team and client.
In 2005 OAG were invited to work with Chapman Taylor Architects to develop the design of high quality glass shop fronts with an English Heritage requirement to provide transparency to the Victorian brickwork at the rear of the retail units. Once again the deflections of the main structure, caused by regular train movements, required a free standing design using glass fins and bespoke bolted fixings. Infilling brick arches with all glass doors and side screens with minimal connections to the brick also required high quality design and installation.
In early 2006 OAG were awarded the contract by ISG Plc to begin the installation of over 2000 m² of toughened heat soaked laminate safety glass, roller shutters doors and glass smoke curtains during the huge fit out of the retail shopping areas. The retail area forms only one part of the re-development of St Pancras Station. The shops are located in two areas of the station. One area, known as the Undercroft, is located under the ‘Barlow Shed’ of the original station and is a Grade 1 listed structure. The second area is the ‘Circle’ and is located in the newly constructed extension to the station.
The frameless glass shop fronts have been designed to accommodate the fall along the length of the Undercroft floor with the huge live deflections in the cast iron head detail that is present in this unique structure. The design criteria and alignment of the glazing and bolts meant that the tolerances of the finished product had to be very accurate to meet the rigid design criteria.
The glass wall modules are vertically cantilevered as no restraint fixings were allowed into the historic cast iron work at the head. The glass fins are positioned behind the screen to provide lateral restraint to the shop front glass. Each glass module spans one structural bay of 4472mm and is divided into 3 panels of glass with open joints between or 2 panels with all glass doors. Bespoke stainless steel glass fittings were required as the open design of the station provided greater loads to the glass than would normally be found in a covered location, excluding the use of propriety systems.
The glass is located and clamped in pressed steel angles fixed directly to the structural slab with expanding anchor fixings. The fins supporting the vertical glass are fixed at the base into fabricated steel brackets which are then fixed to the slab with resin anchors. Behind the glass fin a continuous steel angle provides an edging for the concourse floor finishes.
The glass fronts are connected to the fins via a ‘hook on’ stainless steel fitting providing the required tolerances for alignment of the open glass joints.
There are various configurations of stainless steel fittings depending on the module type and interfacing detail. The fittings to the vertical glass are designed to follow the fall in the floor finishes. All the bespoke glass fittings were sourced by Infinity Glass, a company within the Optima Group.
Working closely with both the UK and European glass processors to ensure the highest quality of workmanship, OAG were able to deliver this prestigious element of this project to programme whilst upholding the high quality bench marks demanded. OAG’s project management team were commended for their approach to site organisation, health and safety and level of professionalism on such a time critical and high profile construction site.
OAG’s own in-house design team and 8 full time project managers with up to 100 site operatives have been working on the retail St Pancras project since 2002.
