The Waterfront Tavern | H&E Architects

As you walk around the boardwalk at the man-made lagoon that is the centre of the new suburb at Shell Cove, you will pass under the main ground floor concrete podium level of the Waterfront Tavern. The building almost didn't come to fruition because the original engineer on the project wasn't able to find a solution for the suspended concrete slabs.

The ground floor of the pub is level with the main level of the adjacent car park. The boardwalk at the lower level is set to the perimeter level of the walkway. To maintain the required headroom under the ground floor beams for the boardwalk, the beams could not be more than 500mm deep.

The original engineer was not able to find a solution in which the beams were less than 600mm deep. This put the whole project in jeopardy. They wanted to explore alternative options, so I was invited to attend a workshop with the architect and developer. They wanted to know if I thought there was a way to make the beams 500mm deep.

The architect, H&E Architects, suggested that I should do my homework before the meeting. Specifically, he advised me to review the proposal and perform some preliminary calculations so that I could offer solid advice. However, much to his dismay, I insisted on showing up blind. I didn't want him to send me any information about the project whatsoever. He was baffled. The next day, a few hours before the meeting, he asked me again if he could send some information through. I insisted that he didn't.

I arrived at the meeting and, after some initial formalities, the other engineer's drawings were spread out in front of me on large B1 sheets. I was nervous. I always am. What if I couldn't find a solution. There was no reason to think that I could.

The previous day, I had asked the architect to spend the first 15 minutes of the meeting giving me a briefing of the project. This would give me time to understand the project. After that I planned to take over the meeting.

The architect had a full 15-minute presentation prepared, and he actually even spoke very slowly. He hoped this would give me time to contemplate a solution. After all, he was the one who had invited me to attend the meeting. He was taking the risk. And he wanted me to succeed.

I didn't need the full 15 minutes. It only took me a few minutes to realize how the design could be improved. A few weeks later, we completed the documentation and began construction of the Tavern. The beams were 500mm deep.

So what did I see?

The process of finding a solution was not complicated, and it may sound contrite or even arrogant, but I started from a foundation of simplicity. My approach to these projects is to imagine what the most efficient solution would be, without the specific constraints that actually exist on the project. For the Waterfront Tavern, these constraints included the boardwalk, the unusual shape, the complexity of the foundations, and the 500mm depth constraint. You can get lost in these constraints, before you have even contemplated the solution. That is why I didn't want any information before the meeting. I didn't want to be biased about the constraints of the design. I wanted to enter the meeting fresh. For a moment, let's put these constraints aside and imagine the perfectly efficient structure.

In order to drive towards this efficient design, the answer was something like this: Introduce cantilevers everywhere, use short first spans, and use large internal spans. That is an efficient solution.

So that is exactly what I did.

In the process we managed to remove three piles from the project. What's even more bizarre is that we made the spans bigger in order to make the beams shallower. That's right, we made the spans bigger. I'm not sure if I will be able to say that in any other project, but there you go. Take a look back at the criteria for an efficient solution: cantilevers, short first spans and large internal spans. The original design had no cantilever, large first spans and short internal spans. We simply shuffled the piles to get closer to the efficient solution.

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