Hawkins Brown scheme for Bishop’s Stortford College approved.

The first phase of ambitious plans for Bishop’s Stortford College have been approved. Wynch Cottage is a modern extension to a historic property on the campus that will provide new staff and student facilities.

The design includes a large 12m clear span roof which uses a folded plate geometry to help keep timber panel thicknesses to a minimum. Smith and Wallwork are using complex finite element software to model the structural behaviour.

Using form to resist gravity is a great example of lean engineering – as Eladio Dieste said ‘The resistant virtues of the structures that we seek depend on their form; it is through their form that they are stable, not because of awkward accumulation of material’.