Welcome to the May 2015 issue of Civil Engineering, the general journal of the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers.
The first of the four papers in this issue is on the redevelopment of Reading station in the UK, which has been transformed into a modern, world-class facility (Warrior et al., 2015). First built by Brunel in 1840, the station serves one of the busiest sections of the UK rail network, with a daily flow of 45 000 passengers. The complexity of the track layout had created a major bottleneck, with significant delays occurring on a daily basis. Doing nothing would have limited the potential future expansion of train services in this area and the future expansion of Reading as a city.
The solution was an £895 million upgrade of the station and its approaches, known as the Reading Station Area Redevelopment Project. The paper describes the various elements of the project including track redesign and gradient modelling, platform and subway alterations and the construction of a huge new passenger transfer bridge.
Our second paper looks at sustainable development in urban areas (Rudden et al., 2015). Today two-thirds of Europeans live in urban areas and by 2050 four out of five Europeans will live in towns and cities. Sustainable development, and in particular sustainable urban living, will become ever more challenging over the next 10 years as urban densities rise further. Urban areas exhibit the greatest stress on sustainable urban living measured through environmental indicators such as traffic congestion, noise and climate change effects.
The European Commission initiated the European Green Capital Award in 2010 to reward the achievements of cities in terms of current environmental performance and plans for a more sustainable future, and to act as a role model for other cities. Rudden et al. (2015) describe notable civil engineering features of some of the winning cities to date in Sweden, Germany, Spain, France and England.
The next paper presents the complex challenges encountered during the design and construction of Raffles City in Chengdu, China (Wang and Hong, 2015). This mixed-use development consists of high-rise towers with office space, hotels, service apartments, a shopping mall and basement car park. The design of the towers in particular is very striking, comprising multiple geometric shapes with angular cantilevers and what the authors describe as a ‘sliced porosity block' to allow sunlight to pass through from all sides.
The paper sets out some of challenges to both designers and builders presented by the unique design. Numerous tests were carried out during the design phase, including earthquake simulation and wind tunnel testing on a 1:20 scale physical model. Before and during the construction phase, construction mock-ups and three-dimensional computer modelling were used to check the constructability of various elements. These included the more complex composite joints and temporary propping of the numerous major cantilevered sections and openings within the towers.
We finish with a paper which describes how in 2005, when London was named as the host city for the 2012 Olympics, a key element of its bid was the ambition to host a truly sustainable games (Bulley and Cardwell, 2015). London 2012 set out to change the approach to master-planning and delivery of venues and infrastructure of sporting events around the world. The resulting venues were an innovative combination of new Olympic Park stadia, temporary arenas in iconic settings around London and the UK, and internationally recognised existing venues such as Wimbledon, Wembley and Lords.
This paper, which concludes a suite of ICE Proceedings papers on the delivery and legacy of London 2012 over the past 3 years, looks at the key principles which influenced the venue master-plan (such as the objective of no ‘white elephants') and the design process to meet sustainability aspirations. Further, it examines the requirements of various key stakeholders and details how these were met by the project team, and finishes by summarising the lessons learnt.
Thanks go to all those involved with the production of this issue, especially to the authors for taking the time to write about their experiences. I hope you will find the variety and content of the papers interesting and stimulating. Please also take some time out to consider whether the projects you are working on would be of interest to your peers. The editorial panel is always looking for suitable papers for publication in this and other ICE Proceedings journals.
