Kimmeridge Fossil Museum

This development is located within the Jurassic Coast region and provides a new two storey portalised frame building.

Challenge

Attention & provision towards performance

The new museum will accommodate the huge collection of Steve Etches, an amateur collector for 35 years, which has been recognised as an important fossil collection. The project will be funded by the Arts Council and the National Lottery Heritage Fund. The two-storey museum and activity halls were developed in conjunction with an exhibit consultant to a tight budget constraint.

Solution

Using models to understand effects

The centre comprises three activity rooms, an environmentally controlled display hall and workshop with catering facilities gearing up for interactive teaching sessions. The Museum will run programmes for active education and visitors in excess of 750,000 per year.

At an early stage in the multi-disciplinary design process, building modelling was undertaken to demonstrate the benefits of good u-valves, with attention to air-tightness and the provision of performance glass so that these could be properly considered and detailed as the design progressed.

Calcinotto were appointed for civil and structural engineering services for this development, commissioned to the end of RIBA Stage 4.

Throughout Calcinotto’s involvement with the project, careful consideration was given to the following issues within the civil and structural design in order to provide added value to the project:

Archaeological investigation was completed within the site. The findings of a roman-dated early farmhouse were classed as minor artefacts of importance
A detailed foundation appraisal was required to establish the sensitivity of the existing and proposed foundations founded within the Kimmeridge Clay
Early development of thermal modelling the porous clay blocks/mass to enable good detailing and accurate costing.
Provision of environmental control systems including light sensitivity for preservation of the exhibition of the fossils.
Feasibility of storm water discharging into the ground through a SUDS system within the car park construction (Sustainable Urban Drainage System)