SIR MICHEAL HOPKINS Sneha R

Tammana Mokshitha
HIGH-TECH ARCHITECTURE OR STRUCTURAL Tanmaya Jyothula
EXPRESSIONISM Simran Hora
HIGH-TECH ARCHITECTURE
High-tech architecture, also known as Structural Expressionism, is a type of Late Modern architectural
style that emerged in the 1970s, incorporating elements of high-tech industry and technology into
building design.
High-tech architecture grew from the modernist style, utilizing new advances in technology and building
materials.
It emphasizes transparency in design and construction, seeking to communicate the underlying structure
and function of a building throughout its interior and exterior.
High-tech architecture makes extensive use of steel, glass, and concrete, as these materials were
becoming more advanced and available in a wider variety of forms at the time the style was developing.
High-tech architecture focuses on creating adaptable buildings through choice of materials, internal
structural elements, and programmatic design. It seeks to avoid links to the past, and as such eschews
building materials commonly used in older styles of architecture.
Common elements include hanging or overhanging floors, a lack of internal load bearing walls, and
reconfigurable spaces. Some buildings incorporate prominent, bright colors in an attempt to evoke the
sense of a drawing or diagram
 HOPKIN’S HOUSE
HAMPSTEAD, LONDON

• Designed by Michael Hopkins as his own home.

• This is a 2-storey lightweight steel and glass structure.
• The house sits about 2.5 m below the street level , so from
the road it appears as a single-storey building which is
accessed across a drawbridge.
• The house was designed to be open and flexible and has
few permanent internal divisions, the spaces are divided
by venetian blinds that hang between the internal
columns.
• And the bed rooms and showers were enclosed with
prefabricated melamine partitions.
• All the spaces have minimal aesthetic with no distinction
made between the office areas and the living spaces.
Entrance bridge
PLAN
• The ground floor has the kitchen living areas ,dining areas and the
other bed rooms are located on the ground floor.
• The studio offices as well as the master bed room overlooking the
garden are located on the upper floors of the house.
• The main entrance is at the first floor level across the footbridge
,spanning a slope down to the garden level.
• There is a spiral staircase connecting the 2 floors .
• GROUND FLOOR:
• The kitchen and living areas are on either sides of the dining room
on the house garden’s side.
• Three further bedrooms are lined up on the street side of the house.

Section
 HOPKINS’ HOUSE
STRUCTURAL DESIGN
•A small scale structural steel grid of 2mx4m was chosen ,to make the
components look small and light. Structural members painted in
•Perimeter columns at 2M centres support the cladding and glazing without sub blue
frames.
•Metal decking for both the floor and the roof is supported on a two-way grid
lattice trusses on free standing columns
• Side walls are of an insulated metal decking sandwich and front and back walls
have full-height sliding glass doors, with no vertical frames.
•It is a 10mx12m rectangular structure made from thin steel columns and
latticed streel trusses that are visible throughout the house and are painted
blue.
•These structural elements stand out against the grey troughed metal sheets that
make the roofs and the walls of the house. Partitions using
venetian blinds
 PORTCULLIS HOUSE
WESTMINSTER, LONDON

•Portcullis House integrates a number of buildings of the

Parliamentary estate at one centralized location.
•It was conceived in the tradition of historic Thames-side
palaces facing the river.
•Accommodates the offices of 210 MPs around a central The main atrium of Portcullis House
courtyard in a six-storey rectangular block. The courtyard
features shade trees and tranquil pools and is surrounded
by cafes and a library.
•It is covered by a frameless glass skin supported by an
oak and stainless steel diagrid and has become a
meeting place and focus for Parliamentary life.
•A gallery at the first floor provides access to a range of
Select Committee Rooms; above this are five floors of
MP's offices that feature views over the courtyard roof or
to the surrounding historic neighborhood and river
embankment.
 PORTCULLIS HOUSE • The building incorporates
Westminster tube station
below it.
•The inner walls around the courtyard are supported • A thick slab of concrete
by six massive columns tied by a transfer structure of
concrete arches. separates Portcullis
House from the station,
•Gullwing precast concrete floor units span onto reportedly to defend
perimeter walls composed of sandstone piers.
against any underground
bomb attacks.
• The load is borne by the
walls, without interior
posts. The corners of the
building are hung from
the roof using massive
steel beams.
 PORTCULLIS HOUSE
•Welded box girders, doubling as air ducts, form spider-like
roof frames on top of the piers. The chimneys are the
terminals of a sophisticated, energy-efficient ventilation
system. They are not used to expel fumes but are part of an
unpowered air conditioning system, which is designed to
draw air through the building by exploiting natural
convection flows.
•Each floor looks identical to the others except the ground
floor which houses the main courtyard with ship-like metallic
sails suspended overhead. The courtyard is decorated with
trees and two shallow baths of water.
•The offices at Portcullis House are generally in sets of two
sharing a common bay in the centre.
 SCHLUMBERGER
CAMBRIDGE RESEARCH
CENTRE
• The research building for Schlumberger in
Cambridge, England, completed in 1984,
represents the first large-scale example of the
use of a Teflon coated, glass-fibre membrane
in the UK.
• The project demonstrated how a membrane
envelope could be combined with more
conventional, rectilinear construction.
• The brief required a facility for research into
aspects of oil exploration, to include a drilling
test station, laboratories, offices and staff
facilities. The building also had to provide
opportunities for contact between scientist and
research staff and provide spaces for meetings
with university personnel.
PLAN
• Through a clear separation of the facilities into those serving
largescale use and those requiring smaller, subdivided
spaces, a simple and logical plan form has been produced.
• The laboratories are divided into parallel zones, The outer
ones reserved for activities which are the most service
orientated and private in nature, while the central spine is
taken up by communal and general-purpose functions.
• The space in between these two topological extremes of the
spectrum is allocated to activities which are functionally
intermediary.
• Two single-story wings running north-south are separated by
a 24 m wide space which is covered by the single-skin
membrane.
• The central space is divided into three bays, two of which
house the drilling test station.
• The drilling rig requires only basic shelter and is thus suitable
catered for by the large space enclosed by the membrane
roof.
• The third bay is used for a winter garden where the staff
restaurant and library are located.
• The restaurant and library areas, which require a greater
degree of environmental control, benefit from being flanked
by the single-storey offices and research facilities, which act
as tempered buffer zones.
ROOF STRUCTURE
• Natural daylighting that permeates the membrane fabric,
which has a 13 % translucency. In addition, the prismatic
trusses that span the central space and separate the
membranes are glazed, affording views of the sky and
letting a proportion of direct sunlight into the centre of the
deep plan
• The separation of the roof membrane into three main sections
corresponds to the 18 x 24 m structural bays.
• Individual tensioned fabric panels are employed at both
ends of the building. In each situation the boundary of the
membrane is clamped to a rectilinear framework, which is
separated from the main structure with glazed infill panels.
• The suspension and tensioning of the membrane is achieved
fron the outside by means of steel cables, hung from eight
pairs of tubular steel masts.
• These masts are supported on steel lattice frames 2,4 m wide
and 19,2 m apart.
• The frames are linked by 1,5 m deep by 24 m long prismatic
trusses forming portals that span the central spaces.
• Aerial booms, connected to the main masts by tension rods,
complete the external framework that holds the membrane in
its required doubly curved shape.
• Once the membrane had been installed and clamped in
place, it was pre-stressed by shortening the links between
each ridge cable and its corresponding aerial cable.
BRACKEN HOUSE
LONDON
Bracken House's existing building had two wings of office space flanking a central printing works.
The printing works were replaced with a new block linking into the refurbished office wings.
The entrance is moved to the centre of this new block.
From here the foyer leads to a central atrium, whose vertical circulation core animates views across the clear-
span, office floors.
The integration of structure and services eliminates ceiling voids, allowing an extra floor to be planned within
local height restrictions.
The central block has load-bearing metal-and-glass facades.
Tri-partite bronze castings rest on the stone piers, supporting the gunmetal structural bays, which extend four
stories high, and from which the frameless windows hang.
Above is a recessed attic floor, completing the composition of base, piano nobile and attic - the essence of
classical palazzo design, made suitable for a modern financial institution.
The most characteristic and enigmatic feature of all is the astronomical clock adorning the façade.
BRACKEN HOUSE

ASTRONOMICAL
CLOCK

PLAN

PLAN

SECTION