De La Warr Pavilion Bexhill-on-Sea

Client: Rother District Council

This famous and elegant building is effectively our job no 1. In it, Felix Samuely used the first significant welded steel frame in the UK and the resulting slenderness of the cantilevering balconies and staircases still add to the excitement of the building.

The building is one of the most important modern movement buildings in the Britain and is listed Grade 1.

The building has undergone a major refurbishment which involved the conversion of part of the building to an art gallery, repairs to the concrete and render, opening up of the old sun parlour, a new staircase and the construction of an underground plantroom beneath the car park. Two new extensions have been built, creating a new community use space and administration offices.

Borehamwood Arts and Leisure Centre

Client:Hertsmere Borough Council

This major centre houses a wide variety of leisure and arts activities: A 50m public swimming pool with spectator seating, training pool with floating floor, health and fitness rooms, dance studio, leisure water, bar, café, reception suite, etc.

A row of vee-shaped high quality precast concrete columns form a portico on the main elevation, with terracotta cladding panels and glass enclosing the building behind.

Windsor Leisure Centre

Client:Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead

Exactly 10 years after the opening of Phase 1, the Duke of Edinburgh opened the extended and refurbished centre, including a 50m fitness pool with floating floor and boom and a multipurpose sports hall, with more health and fitness accommodation.

The sports hall forms a second pavilion, similar in scale to the leisure pool pavilion, and uses simple paired steel trusses to span the 32m square hall.

Between the two pavilions, an elegant arched structure constructed out of circular sections, houses the training pool. To allow the delightful roof to be seen to full advantage, air circulation is relegated to concrete ducts below ground level.

The Skylon

Client:The Skylon at the Festival of Britain, 1951

The Skylon was a futuristic-looking, slender, vertical, cigar-shaped steel tensegrity structure built in 1951 for the Festival of Britain.

It was designed by Powell and Moya architects and Felix Samuely. The Skylon consisted of a steel latticework frame, pointed at both ends and supported on cables slung between three steel beams. The partially constructed Skylon was rigged vertically, then grew taller in situ. The architects' design was made structurally feasible by the engineer Felix Samuely who, at the time, was a lecturer at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in Bedford Square, Bloomsbury. The base was nearly 15 metres (50 feet) from the ground, with the top nearly 90 metres (300 feet) high. The frame was clad in aluminium louvres lit from within at night.

London Zoo Aviary

Client:London Zoo

The London Zoo Aviary (now the Snowdon Aviary) is a Grade II listed structure in London Zoo. It was, designed by Cedric Price Architects, F J Samuely and Partners with assistance from Antony Armstrong-Jones, and built in 1964.

This was Britain’s first walk through aviary and the inspiration for the design is thought to have been derived from the movement of birds in flight.

The building is effectively a tent structure enclosed in netting. The design required innovative techniques such as aluminium castings, stainless steel forged elements and lightweight welded mesh.

The netting is attached to tension cables that run length-wise in the rectilinear structure. They are anchored on the ground at the corners by assemblies of tetrahedral (four-face) tubular compression structures. The 'roof' consists of a pair of cross-over cables running along the apex of the enclosure, also length-wise. It is supported by pairs of tubular steel columns, each pair forming a giant 'V', which hold the cables in tension. The cable/net structure of the whole is clearly expressed though the use of steel compression members and cables in tension.

The Engineering Building at the University of Leicester

Client:University of Leicester

This iconic building is generally regarded as one of the most important of its era; it was listed Grade 2* in 1993. Designed with architects James Stirling and James Gowan the building meets the specific needs of the Engineering Department and the tight corner site.

Two cantilevered lecture theatres support the two joined towers which contain laboratories and offices. The building’s walls are constructed of red Accrington brick and red Dutch tiles. The main frame is constructed with reinforced concrete flat slabs. On top of the taller tower is a water tank; this is deliberately located there to provide high water pressure for the various hydraulic lab experiments.