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Unconventional London school
London's newest purpose-built comprehensive school, at Pimlico, is also the city's most unconven- tional and, at £21⁄2 million, its most expensive in construction.
Glass has been used almost exclusively for the school's outer walls and roofing, causing the build- ing to be described variously as "... an extra- ordinary space-age extravaganza', ‘. an oversize greenhouse', and ... London's most exotic piece
Pimlico comprehensive school
Six formers at the school are provided with these individual cubicles for private study
Far East BUILDER, December 1970
of modern architecture'.
But this clever use of glass by the Greater Lon- don Council's architects permits an optimum amount of light to reach many deep rooms on all four levels. And by sinking the whole school and its island site so that its lowest level is nine feet be- low that of the surrounding roads, the overall height of the school matches that of the neighbour- ing Victorian houses.
Although the school will house 1,725 pupils, it has been accommodated, with its recreation space, within an area of 4% acres
about half the space
—
that such a school might normally be expected to
cover.
The school has four playing courts for basket ball, volleyball, netball and tennis, a huge indoor swimming pool and equally large gymnasium, a 7,000-book library, study cubicles, a roof terrace and a music complex.
New wind measuring technique
A technique for measuring the effect of wind on high rise buildings has been developed by engineers of the National Research Council of Canada.
Preliminary test results indicate that existing low speed aeronautical wind tunnels can be success- fully adapted for the study of surface wind effects in and round building structures.
Up to now special tunnels have had to be cons- tructed to measure wind effects on the structural frame of buildings and to provide data on wind loads on individual cladding elements, windows, or wall panels. Low speed wind tunnels have been of little use since their designs are such as to generate an unwanted low turbulence, constant velocity flow across the tunnel working section.
To get around this problem, engineers with NRC's National Aeronautical Establishment design- ed a grid of "spires" shaped and spaced so as to modify the average speed of wind with height, giving the correct scale of turbulence. A 2.5sq. km section of Montreal was chosen to be the scale model because it contained the 33-storey CIL building. The CIL building had previously been the subject of a full-scale wind effect study by NRC's Division of Building Research and used in a model study in the University of Western Ontario's wind simulator tunnel. The purpose of these projects was to obtain data for comparison of pressure measurements on actual buildings in a typical urban environment with results of model tests in wind tunnels.
So far, the measurements obtained are promi- sing but the study is not yet completed. Further tests will be carried out this year in the NRC 9.1 m wind tunnel, the nation's largest low speed tunnel. These will be done on a larger scale as a cross-check to prove the first results valid.
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