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Giant jumbo hangar at London Airport
A massive hangar, covering an area almost one- third as big again as a football pitch, is being built at Heathrow airport, London, for maintaining BOAE's Boeing 747 jetliners.
Costing £4 million, the hangar will house two of the 350-seater jets side by side together with spacious repair facilities. Its most unusual feature will be a 2,300-ton space-framed roof - the biggest diagonal steel grid in the world. Though having a clear span of 453 ft., the roof will be capable of supporting 200 tons of equipment, much of it moveable.
The roof, which covers 31⁄2 acres, will consist of tubular steel and will be on two levels. It will be assembled on the ground at the site and then raised by jacks on to eight steel columns. Because it was necessary to provide an uninterrupted span and provide support along only three edges, the roof will be specially stiffened. This will be achieved through the use of two huge box girders, one where the roof level changes and the other along the unsupported edge above the hangar doors.
Each girder, more than 550 ft. long, consists of four 18 in. steel tubes bonded together by a lattice work of steel bars. They will be prefabricated in
45 ft. sections and welded together on the site. The front girder will be 27 ft. high and 5 ft. wide while the spinal girder will be 48 ft. high and 11 ft. wide.
The hangar will be 273 ft. from front to rear and 100 ft. tall. Its open workshop will cover more than 100,000 sq. ft. The supporting workshops, stores, cafeteria and offices in the building will be even larger.
The doors, virtually sliding windows, will be on an equally massive scale. There will be six of them each 75 ft. square and each weighing about 45 tons although they will be glass plated.
Consultant architects for the hangar are Royce, Topping & Partners, Edwards and Blackie are the civil engineering consultants and Donald Rudd & Partners, the mechanical engineers. Professor Ma- kowski is the consulting structural engineer.
Biggest building in Brussells
The Belgian Post Office headquarters and the entire Brussells local government administration, as well as numerous offices and shops, will be housed in Brussell's largest building now under construction at a cost of US$45.6 million.
Accommodation will consist of 700,000 sq. ft. of offices and 226,000 sq. ft. of shops, plus parking space for 1,000 cars. The 11-storey structure will be 270 ft. high and will have a 69 ft. deep basement of five floors. Three of the five basement floors will be used for parking and a fourth will house the Eveque underground station.
The central tower will rise above a five-storey base in the shape of a cross which will include two shopping centres. The complex will also contain an extension to an adjacent department store, 73 shops, two banks and a service station. A two-way system of mail-carrying pneumatic tubes will link the underground railway with the sorting office.
Model of BOAC's combined 747 component overhaul unit and multi-storey car park
Far East BUILDER, April 1969
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