The South Quay Plaza 1 (SQP1) project (also known as Valiant Tower) is a 68-storey residential tower, the first and second floors house an exclusive health club including a 20-metre pool, gym, studio space and spa. There is also a residents’ lounge and garden on the 56th floor, which features the one of the highest bars in London, offering unique views of the docklands and the city beyond.
The tower is 214.5m in height and is currently the second tallest residential tower in London and is designed by world leading architects Foster + Partners. This is the first of two large towers to be built on the South Quay Plaza site as part of the redevelopment, with the basement of the second tower SQP4 (also known as Harcourt Tower) now under construction. In total up to 888 apartments are to be made available on the site.
The South Quay Plaza development will include new ground floor retail as well as a wide range of residential amenities, along with adding up to 1.5 acres of community and children’s spaces.
Levels 1 through to 67 were designed as post-tensioned by Praeter Engineering, all of the other lower ground floor and basement levels are designed as traditional RC by WSP. Praeter and WSP developed the design and the use of post-tensioning to limit the typical upper slab depths to 200mm thick using post-tensioning rather than a minimum thickness of 225mm traditional RC, this has allowed for an extra floor to be added to the structure.
The edge reinforcement for the project was designed and detailed by Praeter as pre-fabricated mesh (where possible) and was a critical point that our client Expanded Structures required to speed up the rebar installation times, this significantly reduced floor to floor construction cycles and allowed a significant time saving on the overall programme.
Due to the height of the building the 2 tower cranes required tying back into the building, the ties were co-ordinated to be anchored through the PT slabs, Praeter carried out the torqueing of these ties in conjunction with designing the PT slabs to resist the forces from the ties.