Cloudy Bay, producers of world-renowned wines in New Zealand’s Marlborough region, has recently extended operations by building all-timber bottling hall. Employing the combined skills of architect Les Morris and engineer Graham Kerrigan of Kerrigan Engineers, Cloudy Bay winery now boasts a people-friendly bottling hall with a rustic charm that is faithful to its original setting.
Using Hyspan by futurebuild for the portal, the LVL timbers were left exposed internally and sanded with a polyurethaned finish. This was the attractive timber effect that Morris and Kerrigan were after and at a price that made the choice of LVL even more appealing to their client.
The hall building is 20m wide by 43m long, with portals at 5.4m centres, as specified by futurebuild. The building itself is constructed using tilt slab, pre-cast concrete walls. Morris and Kerrigan favoured this method for both aesthetic and practical reasons.
The aesthetics also needed to be consistent with the existing ustic charm of the winery. Morris says they wanted to get away from the industrial look of steel and the blandness of only concrete. Kerrigan suggested the alternative of timber portals and futurebuild in turn suggested the LVL products both as an economically viable alternative and for their appearance.
Another significant advantage of the Hyspan beams was dust prevention. With steel beams, the I-beam has a ledge that tends to collect dust - an issue that concerned Cloudy Bay. As the Hyspan beams have no ledges, but rather are rectangular-shaped with very sharp and clean lines, there are no ledges for the dust to collect on.
Source: Building Products News.
