Single Oak
OPS were appointed to provide structural design services for a private client, in a design team with WKK architects. The development comprised of two individually conceived residential properties, with elegantly curved geometry both externally and internally, and provided many interesting challenges for the structural design.
The goal was to produce a new high specification ‘House’ on one plot and a secondary ‘Pool House’ building on the adjoining site, with landscaped grounds throughout.
Although work was halted on the development after the final structural design was delivered, the site and scheme with full planning permission is available for interested parties.
Single Oak was designed as part of the larger ‘Cricket’s Hill’ project, for which OPS also designed the main house.
Location: Nr. Weybridge, Surrey
Architect: WKK Architects
Structural Engineer: OPS Structures Ltd
+ Design Considerations
The pool house is designed to have accommodation over three floors with a basement garage, guest and staff accommodation, spa and gym facilities and a 20m swimming pool on the top level enclosed by a free-standing canopy roof.
At the location for the Pool House building a high-water table was recorded and therefore the structure is subject to significant buoyancy effects. The Pool House building was similarly designed in reinforced concrete frame, to suit the curved geometry but also to provide material mass to counter the uplift effects.
The swimming pool location at first floor level provided challenges in minimising structural depths (and therefore maximising ceiling heights beneath) whilst supporting a swimming pool of 1.8m depth.
The canopy roof structure that encloses the Pool deck is a freestanding structure with limited props to the concrete frame primarily to limit deflection. The lateral stability of the frame is achieved by frame action (“portalised”) along both the transverse and longitudinal directions.