Project Description

Elizabeth House is a landmark 1.2m sqft commercial office development, located adjacent to Waterloo Station.  Robert Bird Group are the structural, civil and geotechnical engineer for the project, which also includes 2 pedestrian bridges.

A fundamental design driver for the project is the need to engage the new development with the passenger flow from the Waterloo Station concourse. This has resulted in one of the key features of the building – an acre’s worth of public amenity space at Podium level underneath the mega-arch structures which support the superstructure above. Connecting this space to the concourse and between the main two building zones are two new pedestrian bridges, each with a unique design. Each bridge, while still under design development, seeks to enhance the amenity space and provide further distinct identity to the development.

Project Challenges

The Waterloo Concourse bridge spans from the new podium garden to the existing station concourse, and provides one of the main entry points to the new scheme. As the main link to the station, a number of options were considered to provide an efficient structural system while also including a railway inspired aesthetic. In addition, due to significant below ground constraints, no new foundations are proposed, with the new bridge making use of existing foundations to remove the risk on installation, with the bridge structural system tuned to only impose loads within the capacity of these existing foundations. The Waterloo Square Bridge, linking the two sections of the podium to the centre of the building, again is designed to reflect the railway heritage of the area. To reduce the need for significant connections at each end of the bridge, the bulk of the load is suspended from the superstructure above, using raked cables. This allows a cleaner and more simplistic connection to the podium structure.