A community feel
The Rangitikei District Council appointed NZCEL as structural engineers for the Bulls community centre. The centre was designed to bring all the town’s main council facilities under one roof. That includes the main civic functions of the Town Hall, i-Site, tourism office and the Learning Hub (library). The townhall was completed in September 2020.
NZCEL worked in a team with Architecture Workshop and W&W Construction to complete this building.
It is housed in a hybrid façade, the building has a modern appeal with a warm community feel. A baby-blue spiral staircase takes you to the second floor which is where the new library is located.
The library includes a mezzanine deck, with couches and tables so people can read and look in on the town hall or out at the new town square, which will be finished by the end of 2021. The third floor has three meeting rooms and caters for corporate and private functions.
Steel moment frames with concrete flooring systems were used to mitigate construction time, cost and co-incorporate a high level of resilience when subject to severe earthquake accelerations. To achieve ductility and resilience, capacity design principles were incorporated. Capacity design manipulates dependable failure mechanism to form in the beams, somewhat like a structural fuse. The columns and their connectors are designed to be stronger than the beams to manipulate the desired response.
