The Peech Hotel
ARCELORMITTAL SA ARCHITECTURAL CATEGORY
The Peech Hotel is a garden boutique hotel located
in Melrose, Johannesburg. Meshworks was tasked with
extending the hotel onto the newly acquired neighbouring
property, designing an addition that respected the existing
hotel and built upon its best features. The brief included:
• Increase the hotel’s accommodation by sixteen rooms
of approximately 45m 2 each;
• Apportion a reasonable garden space to the existing
residence on the south half of the new property;
• Retain the feel of private pavilions floating in a garden.
The planted steel mesh of the wrap-around balconies
was an important element used to craft the articulated
façades of an urban village. Together with the expressed
steel framework of the buildings, it creates a play of
layers, materials, light and shadows. The mesh provides a
contrast with the impermeability of the masonry surfaces
as well as comprising a changing organic screening device.
This ‘wrapping’ allows for adaptability, depending
on the particular siting conditions and orientation of the
units. The expressive repetition of vertical steel members
supports a cohesive visual language.
Beyond this expressive role, the steel cladding was
essential in establishing privacy gradients and in ensuring
that there was a considered relationship between the
units. The steelwork allows guests to experience and
control various degrees of visual permeability into and
out of the units and their zones. This layering means that
balconies can become private outdoor courtyards and that
different thresholds reveal different spaces that open up
with movement through the unit. Lastly, because of its
planted nature, but also because of the way it could direct
and orientate each unit, the cladding became a tool in the
integration of built form with landscape, expressing the
passage of light and shadow, and significantly contributing
to the ‘garden urbanity’. The articulation achieved through
the various steel elements in the design palette created
visual and spatial diversity, restructuring the traditional
uniform scripting of a hotel typology. The steel screening
solutions allow for a filtered experience that is still spatially
interesting and dynamic. The steelwork is not only rational
and functional, but becomes poetic too.
Client: The Peech Boutique Hotel
Architect: Meshworks
Structural Engineer: EVH Consulting
Quantity Surveyor: Viking Construction
Steelwork Contractor: Jaru Design
Cladding Contractor: Monro Sheeting
Cladding Supplier: Safintra
CTICC Skybridge
SAISC STEEL AWARDS BRIDGES CATEGORY
The CTICC Skybridge was intended as an above-ground
link between CTICC 1 and CTICC 2 on Cape Town’s
Foreshore. Development of the CTICC skybridge was
considered critical in enabling the two buildings to function
as a single integrated international events hosting venue
and providing a seamless visitor’s experience.
The curved skybridge with its slender slanted steel
columns has an unusually dynamic aesthetic from
outside. The curved route inside provides a dynamic visual
experience as one moves across the bridge in anticipation
of an obscured end destination.
The bridge was always envisaged as being constructed
out of steelwork – to allow maximum views to the sides
and to enable construction with minimal disruption to the
street below. Universal beam and column sections were
chosen to frame the concrete floor and roof, which were
both cast in sections in between these steel members,
Steel Awards
with support provided by Bondek sheeting. Universal
Column sections were also chosen for the vertical
members, in order to frame the glass panels.
Circular hollow sections were chosen for the diagonal
members to minimise the disruption of the view. The
same members were also used for horizontal bracing at
the roof and floor level, to keep the section sizes down
as well as for the slanting support columns.
Client: CTICC
Architects: Makeka Design Lab,
SVA International, VDMMA in a JV
Structural Engineer: Sutherland
Quantity Surveyor: Turner & Townsend
Project Manager: Lukhozi Engineers
Main Contractor: Superway Construction
Steelwork Contractor: Anchor Steel Projects
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