The Savill Building is a visitor centre at the entrance to The

Savill Garden The Savill Garden is an enclosed part of Windsor Great Park in England, created by Sir Eric Savill in the 1930s. It is managed by the Crown Estate and charges an entrance fee. The garden includes woodland, ornamental areas and a pond. The attr ...

Windsor Great Park Windsor Great Park is a Royal Park of , including a deer park, to the south of the town of Windsor on the border of Berkshire and Surrey in England. It is adjacent to the private Home Park, which is nearer the castle. The park was, for ma ...

, Surrey, England designed by Glen Howells Architects,

Buro Happold Buro Happold (previously ''BuroHappold Engineering'') is a British professional services firm that provides engineering consultancy, design, planning, project management, and consulting services for buildings, infrastructure, and the environment ...

and Engineers Haskins Robinson Waters. It was opened by the Duke of Edinburgh on 26 June 2006.

Building

The building is located on the space of a mature beech tree plantation which was severely damaged in the hurricane of 1987. All remaining mature trees were retained in the scheme. The Stirling Prize judges describe it as: :"This project is a good modern interpretation of that great British traditional form: the Pavilion in the Park."

Gridshell roof

The roof is the dominant feature of the building: :"So what you have is effectively a great big weather-sealed canopy, perched on dynamically angled steel legs. It is the ultimate summerhouse, the granddaddy of gazebos." ::''Hugh Pearman'' The building has a 'three-domed' sinusoidal-shaped

gridshell A gridshell is a structure which derives its strength from its double curvature (in a similar way that a fabric structure derives strength from double curvature), but is constructed of a grid or lattice. The grid can be made of any material, b ...

roof of two layers of interlocking larch laths (50 × 80 mm) on a one-metre square grid, supported on steel quadropods and a steel tubular ring-beam. The exact form of the roof was designed by

to be the most structurally efficient possible using specialist in-house software (Tensyl). The roof is clad in plywood panels, with aluminium weather proofing and a top cladding of oak. All timber was harvested from the nearby

Crown Estate The Crown Estate is a collection of lands and holdings in the United Kingdom belonging to the British monarch as a corporation sole, making it "the sovereign's public estate", which is neither government property nor part of the monarch's priv ...

. The roof is over 90 m in length and up to 25 m wide, and because of its own separate structural system appears to hover over the brick and glass facade of the building. The carpentry, which used over 400 larch trees and 20 carpenters, was done by the Green Oak Carpentry Company.

Exterior

The roof structure remains exposed from the inside, and is a notable feature of the building. The entrance facade is covered by an extensive green roof, which is planted with ''

Microbiota decussata ''Microbiota'' is a monotypic genus of evergreen coniferous shrubs in the cypress family Cupressaceae, containing only one species, ''Microbiota decussata'' (Siberian carpet cypress, Russian arbor-vitae). The plant is native and endemic to a li ...

'' and ''

Juniperus squamata ''Juniperus squamata'', the flaky juniper, or Himalayan juniper is a species of coniferous shrub in the cypress family Cupressaceae, native to the Himalayas and China. It represents the provincial tree of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (unofficial). Des ...

''. The exterior cladding of the building is a full-height glass curtain walling system, providing views from inside and creating an unusual lighting effect in the dark.http://www.e-architect.co.uk/oxford/savill_building.htm http://www.e-architect.co.uk/oxford/savill_building.htm http://www.e-architect.co.uk/oxford/savill_building.htm
/ref>

Interior

The building, which is partially below ground level, contains a shop, seminar rooms, offices, planteria (small garden centre) and restaurant, with a raised terrace along one edge allowing views over the gardens from the centre's interior spaces. Below the entrance there is a basement housing service spaces including the kitchen, storerooms and washrooms. The large main internal space is subdivided by

Corian Corian is a brand of solid surface material created by DuPont. Its primary use is as a countertop and benchtop surface, though it has many other applications. It is composed of acrylic polymer and alumina trihydrate (ATH), a material deriv ...

'pods' which are separate from the main building structure.

Awards

The building was shortlisted for the 2007

Stirling Prize The Royal Institute of British Architects Stirling Prize is a British prize for excellence in architecture. It is named after the architect James Stirling, organised and awarded annually by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). The S ...

. The structural design won the IStructE Structural Awards Supreme Award for Structural Engineering Excellence in 2007, in addition to the Award for Arts, Leisure or Entertainment Structures. At the 2007

RIBA The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) is a professional body for architects primarily in the United Kingdom, but also internationally, founded for the advancement of architecture under its royal charter granted in 1837, three suppl ...

Awards it also won a RIBA Award and a RIBA National Award. At the 2007 Wood Awards it won, a Gold Award, a Commercial and Public Access Award, and Structural Award.

Gallery

Image:Saville Building roof interior gridshell.jpg, Interior of wooden gridshell roof Image:Savill Building front.jpg, Front view Image:Savill Building parkside.jpg, Rear view (from garden)

References

External links

{{IStructE Supreme Award laureates Buildings and structures in Windsor Great Park Visitor centres in England Lattice shell structures Buildings and structures completed in 2006