Glulam timber beams from B&K Structures
Peppa Pig indoor play building
Paultons Family Theme Park, New Forest, Hampshire
Harry Stafford, project architect, HPW Partnership
Peppa Pig World features around 20 rides themed on the popular children’s TV character and the indoor play area was designed to enable the park’s owner, Paultons, to extend visiting periods into the wet and cold weather.
Grassy hills feature extensively in the TV show and are mirrored in the smooth curved green roof of the building, which encloses a cafe, shop, kitchen, public toilets and the indoor play area, spread across a 9,000ft2 ground floor, plus two mezzanine floors above.
The roof shape was created using eight cross-laminated glulam timbers, at 7.1m centres on the perimeter steel columns. The glulams were manufactured to form two different curvatures: a standard geometrical curve at either end of the building; and a bespoke curve over the central play area, which kicks up to create higher eaves where windows have been inserted. The windows provide children with an exciting glimpse of the 6m-high climbing frame inside as they approach.
The glulams are made from Austrian whitewood and spruce and had to be very strong to support long uninterrupted spans of up to 19.5m and the weight of the green roof above, which exerts forces of around 2kN/m2.
We chose B&K Structures to supply the timbers because it specialises in glulam and offered the most competitive price for this type of building.
We initially considered using crenelated steel beams, which would have been cheaper, but opted for timber to avoid an industrial warehouse type aesthetic. Timber is also very thermally efficient, which means less heat loss through the fabric than steel and no cold bridges. Paultons is keen to reduce its carbon footprint — its in-house construction team super-insulated the building well beyond Building Regs — and glulam has a low embodied energy.
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