The Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art is one of a number of completed projects in a long line of commissions for the Royal Botanic Gardens. These include award winning structures to the Millennium Seed Bank at Wakehurst Place and the Wolfson Wing, Jodrell Laboratories at Kew.
The Gallery was designed to provide ideal conditions in which to show works which are of a fragile nature, predominantly on paper. The display spaces had to meet stringent lighting and humidity requirements. The building's unobtrusive design is sympathetic to the adjacent Marianne North Gallery and to the surrounding gardens. A subtle link at the back joins the two galleries.
The structural engineering approach was to provide an elegant and lean structure which integrated with the energy strategy and provided the high degree of transparency required by the architecture. Structure for the Gallery was designed to have minimal ecological impact and construction methodologies were carefully controlled to mitigate disturbance to visitors to the Gardens.
The superstructure is framed in steel with slender columns supporting a two way spanning grillage of beams which carry the roof and stabilise the facades. The roof structure, which creates a large column free space over the principal gallery was designed to be fabricated in long ladder like sections off-site, with connections between them designed to provide the necessary structural continuity. Specially designed details between the columns and roof beams accommodate thermal movements and minimise forces acting on the glass walls.
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