Central Park station—engineering a new leaf for Manchester Available to Purchase

Central Park Metrolink station canopy is a dramatic tension structure at the gateway to a new urban regeneration business park in Manchester, UK. Resembling a giant leaf suspended from its stem, it serves both as a transport shelter and an architectural landmark. This paper reports on the organic structure's challenging design and construction, which required the use of sophisticated non-linear analysis techniques as well as two separate wind-tunnel investigations to determine wind loads and likely dynamic behaviour. A complex 16-stage construction sequence also had to be developed and analysed to achieve the required level of cable prestress and to ensure nothing was overstressed during erection.