ROSE BOWL

Rose Bowl Building Analysis



Rose Bowl Building Analysis

Introduction

The Rose Bowl is a recent flagship development and a landmark for the city of Leeds. Located next to Leeds Civic Hall, where the local capital's civic, educational, business and cultural quarters meet, this state of the art development features the very latest in modern conferencing facilities and design. Offering a corporate level of service, this venue is ideal for banquets, receptions, conferences, exhibitions, meetings and training. The Rose Bowl has hosted a number of prestigious events including the Northern Ballet Fundraiser dinner, the Academy of Marketing Annual Conference and the Leeds Architecture Awards.

Very much at the centre of the project, The Rose Bowl is a lecture theatre 'pod' which sits 'half in and half out' of an entrance hall and contains a 250-seat theatre, two 140-seat and four 60-seat theatres. As well as having a highly unusual oval bowl-like shape, tapering outward as it gets higher; the structure is clad in distinctive triangulated reflective glass panels (Ahmed, 2009, 141).

Millions of viewers tune in to their televisions each year to watch the Rose Bowl on New Year's Day. Contemporary parade floats are now completed mainly by professional float building companies and take over a year to build. Thus far, the Rose Bowl has included 18 Heisman Trophy winners, and produced 28 national champions and 197 consensus All-Americans. It is considered to be one of the “original” bowls—more than 100 other bowls have since come and gone. Other original bowls include the Sugar, Orange, Cotton, and Sun Bowls.

Architect

Sheppard Robson

Structural Engineer

Arup

Steelwork Contractor

Fisher Engineering Ltd (Severfield-Rowen Plc)

Main Contractor

Bam Construction Ltd

Basic Design and Overview

The building is built over a two to three storey basement car park which extends significantly beyond the footprint of the building. The sloping site initiates a full storey height difference transversely the building with access at ground floor into the middle atrium beneath the 'pod', and at first floor directly into the building and on into the main lecture theatre. From ground level up the structure is steel framed to provide maximum flexibility to the floor plate. Cellular beams were used to allow the coordination of mechanical and electrical services into the void. Clear spans of 15 metres are found throughout the building with perimeter columns set back into the space to create a clean façade. The whole of the steel frame rises off the concrete basement columns and transfer structure located within the ground floor slab.

The outer four-storey faculty block and two-storey plant enclosure were erected in phases to facilitate access to working faces. The faculty building steelwork was initially erected up to third floor level and then used as a working platform for the operation of MEWPs to allow the safe erection of the remaining steelwork to the upper levels.

The pod structure itself consists of a series of Y-shaped feature columns connected to a circumferential truss, or diagrid, extending around the envelope of the pod. Temporary constancy during pod erection was make sure by tying the circumferential trusses back to ...