Großbritannien-Exkursion - oppelshausen

IMAX Cinema, Waterloo
This high-tech auditorium is located in a
very difficult urban site: in the middle of a
roundabout with tunnels below.
The IMAX Cinema is the latest large
screen format movie theatre for the British
Film Institute located within the Bullring
Roundabout, adjacent to Waterloo Station,
and will be an addition to the South Bank
Arts Centre. The cinema will be Europe's
largest venue showing extra-high
resolution IMAX films.
The building consists of a circular drum
approximately 40m in diameter and six
storeys high providing an enclosure to
house the auditorium. The perimeter
structure is circular on plan and provides a
gallery behind the glass cladding.
Internally the majority of the space is
devoted to the auditorium with other areas
providing circulation, reception and plant
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areas. The site is in a well in the middle of
one of London's busiest roundabouts and
as if the headache of site deliveries was not
enough, a network of tunnels beneath the
site made the foundation design a
nightmare. Two Waterloo and City Line
Underground tunnels run through the
centre of the site at a depth of
approximately 4.5m. At the south end of
the site a main sewer and a BT duct
infringe on the building's footprint
requiring the foundations to span up to
23m to avoid the obstructions. The solution
was to provide a thick concrete slab
supported on piles located where there was
space to locate them.
As there was no direct access by road to
the site an elevated steel gantry was
provided at road level which allowed
traffic to enter from the roundabout to
deliver materials. The gantry was designed
to accept only a single wagon and there
were restrictions on the hours during which
deliveries could be made.
In order to provide acoustic isolation of the
auditorium from ground-borne vibration,
spring mounts have been installed between
the soffit of the first floor and the heads of
the ground floor columns.
The structure above the first floor podium
slab is a structural steel frame. The upper
floor areas are constructed using
lightweight concrete cast onto profile steel
sheeting. The floor beams are designed to