Admirals View is a residential development of comprising of three buildings housing a total of 8 sectional title units, situated in the quiet seaside village of Brenton on Sea, near Knysna.
The original four buildings on the site were destroyed in the Knysna Fire of 2017, and the brief was to re-design three buildings to replace these.
Timber frame as a method of construction intergrated well with Cape Coastal style, and fibre cement cladding, aluminium windows and doors, and pre-coated roofsheets were proposed to minimise maintenance.
Computer modelling & presentation, for which I used Archicad, proved extremely useful in showing clients exactly what they were getting and enabling most changes to be made while still in the early design stages. As a result there were minimal variation orders made during the construction phase. To enable fast tracking, I designed the timber walling and flooring structure using specialised timber detailing software, Archiframe. This enabled to contractor to pre-cut and pre-assemble the timber frame wall panels in a factory, needing only to be assembled on site. I worked closely with the structural engineer on the beams, so that we could intergrate the steel I-beams, where required into the timber structure. We also made extensive use of Flitch beams, which is a steel plate sandwiched between to timber joists bolted together, where the joists perform the same structural function that would ordinarily be performed by the flanges of an I-beam.
Allowance was made in the design for items that could possibly later be needed. These included providing space for, and having conduiting from the roof installed to, an area for batteries and a invertor should a PV backup system be wanted in future. On the services side larger than standard Distribution Boards were fitted, to allow for space for additional sub-distribution boards for PV systems
CONTRACTOR
T&B Construction
CONSULTING ENGINEERS
Rein Hofmyer & Associates