Copper Beaches – Indoor Riding Arena, Manchester

To achieve a visually outstanding, large scale construction project you’ve got to go a long way to beat the look and feel of glulam. The dynamics of this project resonate in a really successful way. Perhaps because of the size of the project and physical punctuation of glulam column and roof beams. These natural elements help frame the building visually, structurally and aesthetically.

This commission was for a single story equestrian building. By their nature, anything to do with horses has to be scaled up and where a number of horses would be trained and exercised in the same space the desired footprint would need to be huge.

The resulting building used all of the skills of Buckland Timbers staff team – the engineers designed and calculated the columns and beams, whilst the staff on the manufacturing side had to use almost all the formers to make the huge roof beams. Transport was coordinated allowing for an escorted lorry (due to the length of the roof beams) and once on site, a detailed installation process choreographed the erection of the framework.

Specification

  • Project: Equestrian arena
  • Commission: Engineering design, manufacture and installation.
  • Client: Charles Britton Equestrian Construction 
  • Timber: European Whitewood
  • Finish: Sadolin stain
  • Cost (approx): £95 per sq metre for engineering, design, manufacture and installation.
Buckland Timber