A gap in a column holding up a section of Gillwell Taxi Retail Park is big enough to fit two clasped hands into.
The gap has been explained as an engineering innovation and is not a crack, as members of the public feared.
East London engineers have expressed curiosity about the columns holding up the brand new mall, which are split into four quarters, with two gaps running at different widths from top to bottom.
The contracting company, Iguana Projects, said the pillars are structurally sound, and part of a highly complex and innovative design which combined:
l Building on solid rock;
l Creating floor platforms held up by columns pile-driven into bedrock 50m underground; and
l Building floors held in place by “post-tensioned” metal suspension beams.
Iguana Projects’ alternative director Jacques Visser said the pillars were designed to expand to create a gap as much as 3cm wide in summer, and to close to the point where the sides were flush in winter.
The columns were an innovation “nowhere else to be found in South Africa”.
Visser said the retail park’s seven floors were built in different sections and that a few pillars had to be “omitted” to allow for a turning circle for delivery trucks.
Public concerns about the “cracked” pillars were communicated to Saturday Dispatch, which went to look, especially at the bustling underground taxi rank.
A taxi driver pointed out faint cracks running along the cement floor from one pillar to another. Visser said they were superficial “hairline” cracks on the bed of cement fill. The cracks were also due to the presence of a lot of groundwater.
“We have about six pumps going all the time,” he said.
Saturday Dispatch took photographs of the columns and showed them to an East London civil engineer, who asked not to be named as he was not authorised to speak to the media. “I have never seen a split circular column like this in over 20 years, but if the engineer genuinely wasn’t worried about the loadings then it should work.”
However, he said he could only make an informed and fair opinion once he had seen the detailed floor plans.
The Amathole branch of the SA Institute of Civil Engineers said they had forwarded the photographs to their structural engineer for comment, but he was presently ill and off work. — mikel@dispatch.co.za
Mall gaps ‘unique design’
The gap has been explained as an engineering innovation and is not a crack, as members of the public feared.
East London engineers have expressed curiosity about the columns holding up the brand new mall, which are split into four quarters, with two gaps running at different widths from top to bottom.
The contracting company, Iguana Projects, said the pillars are structurally sound, and part of a highly complex and innovative design which combined:
l Building on solid rock;
l Creating floor platforms held up by columns pile-driven into bedrock 50m underground; and
l Building floors held in place by “post-tensioned” metal suspension beams.
Iguana Projects’ alternative director Jacques Visser said the pillars were designed to expand to create a gap as much as 3cm wide in summer, and to close to the point where the sides were flush in winter.
The columns were an innovation “nowhere else to be found in South Africa”.
Visser said the retail park’s seven floors were built in different sections and that a few pillars had to be “omitted” to allow for a turning circle for delivery trucks.
Public concerns about the “cracked” pillars were communicated to Saturday Dispatch, which went to look, especially at the bustling underground taxi rank.
A taxi driver pointed out faint cracks running along the cement floor from one pillar to another. Visser said they were superficial “hairline” cracks on the bed of cement fill. The cracks were also due to the presence of a lot of groundwater.
“We have about six pumps going all the time,” he said.
Saturday Dispatch took photographs of the columns and showed them to an East London civil engineer, who asked not to be named as he was not authorised to speak to the media. “I have never seen a split circular column like this in over 20 years, but if the engineer genuinely wasn’t worried about the loadings then it should work.”
However, he said he could only make an informed and fair opinion once he had seen the detailed floor plans.
The Amathole branch of the SA Institute of Civil Engineers said they had forwarded the photographs to their structural engineer for comment, but he was presently ill and off work. — mikel@dispatch.co.za
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