West Dean College Gardens Visitor’s Center: Revised Truss Design

27/01/1995

Design Matters, Proposal Brief w/sketches

12 pages with rough structural design information and calculations for the wooden roof truss of the West Dean Visitor’s Center. Two pages include notes about assumed forces, allowed stresses, size estimations, wind bracings etc. and the rest of the pages contain sketches of a truss and the various structural calculations of compression, stress and tension estimated on its members. A cost estimation has also been calculated.

Authors:

Randall Schmidt, Center for Environmental Structure, Berkeley, CA, U.S.A.

Content of

Project

West Dean College Gardens Visitor's Center 1994 to 1996

Near Chichester, West Sussex, U.K.

Civic, Realized , Construction completed in Nov. 1995

Client:

Edward James Foundation

C.E.S. staff:

Christopher Alexander, John Hewitt, students from "The Prince of Wales's Institute of Architecture", students from Portsmouth University

Contractor:

Center for Environmetal Structure, as Management Contractor and General Contractor of record, with John Hewitt as Project Manager

Project stages:

Layout on the site by clients and C.E.S. Use of full scale mock-ups Design Development and Building Permit drawings done after layout Direct construction management and on-site design decisions Budget and subcontractors under C.E.S. control Innovativ

The West Dean Center is a simple one-story masonry building with a large red-tiled roof and intricate brickwork for its thick walls. The building is surrounded by gardens, and its south facing wall has large arched windows overlooking the garden ...

References

Correspondence