British Airways i360

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British Airways i360
General view of the British Airways i360 from the east

General view of the British Airways i360 from the east

Data
location United KingdomUnited Kingdom Brighton
architect David Marks, Julia Barfield
Builder The West Pier Trust
Architectural style Modern
Construction year 2014-2016
building-costs £ 46.2 million
height 173.45 m
Coordinates 50 ° 49 '16.9 "  N , 0 ° 9' 3.4"  W Coordinates: 50 ° 49 '16.9 "  N , 0 ° 9' 3.4"  W.
particularities
Further construction data:
• View of up to 138 meters
• Total weight of 1350 tons

The British Airways i360 is a 173 meter high observation tower in Brighton in the south of England . The tower, which was built between 2014 and 2016, was opened on August 4, 2016. The non-rotating, but vertically movable viewing platform goes up to a height of 138 meters. The i360 is the tallest observation tower in the United Kingdom and has the second highest publicly accessible platform in the country after The Shard in London .

At the same time, with a height-to-width ratio of more than 40: 1, the structure is one of the slimmest towers in the world and one of the tallest observation towers with a height-adjustable observation platform. Its extraordinary design and technology has been recognized by numerous prizes.

story

prehistory

The idea for a lookout tower can be traced back to the 1960s. In a contribution for the British Pathé newsreel dated March 24, 1964, but not broadcast , three men are shown discussing a design for a 300-meter-high observation tower anchored in the sea near the beach. The tower presented stands on an L-shaped, multi-storey base house, which is connected to the waterfront by a concrete pier around 90 meters long. Three slender, non- tapering , parallel pillars support a simple, low profile, two-storey, slightly convex tower cage with two large, uninterrupted ribbon windows. Above and below the tower cage, two truncated cones connect the different structures with one another. A thin mast, which forms the top of the structure, connects to the upper truncated cone at a height of about 210 meters. An architectural illustration shows that the location for the Brighton Tower was planned between Brighton Pier and the West Pier , which is now only partially preserved , not far from today's observation tower. The plans go to a Canadian company called Skydeck International Ltd. back from Toronto . The tower, for which three elevators were planned, should offer space for up to 1000 people in its tower cage on two visitor floors and be able to broadcast radio and television signals. The cost of construction was estimated at around £ 1.5million, which is around £ 30million in 2019 prices. The project came to a standstill when the planning company and the City of Brighton Council could not agree on the annual rent to be paid by the investors to the city.

Planning

As early as 2003, the architects David Marks (1953–2017) and Julia Barfield proposed a tourist attraction for Brighton - both had planned the London Eye in London at the end of the 1990s . The structural designer of the i360 was John Roberts , who is also a shareholder in the operating company of the i360. After the implementation for 2008 was initially considered, the project suffered a setback from the financial crisis from 2007 , so that the financing had to be negotiated again. At that time, a tower height of 183 meters was assumed.

After a newly founded company secured the pre-financing with a mortgage in 2012, the entire scope of the investment was approved in March 2014. Of the £ 46 million budget, £ 36.2 million came from the Public Works Loan Board , a state-owned company that provides loans to public institutions from the National Loans Fund .

On average, the operators assumed an annual visitor number of around 700,000 people.

controversy

In the local area of ​​Brighton there were various campaigns against the loan and the erection of the tower. Votes against the project were collected in signature campaigns. Even some architects, including initially Paul Zara and Paul Nicholson, but also representatives from society and the media supported the action. However, only a few hundred votes came together. In an online petition on change.org , just 1,447 opponents rejected the project. Paul Zara even turned into a supporter in the course of the debate.

Valerie Payton of the SaveHOVE campaign said the tower "would stand out enormously from the coast and its wide, large and monstrous steel structure would be ubiquitous as soon as one looked into the city or its surroundings." the city would have to repay the loan even if the project should fail. Selma Montford of the Brighton Society questioned the forecast attendance. Brighton residents who disapprove of the tower refer to it as an iSore ; the English word "eyesore" means "unsightly sight" or "construction sin".

building

After all contracts had been signed in June 2014, construction officially began on July 29 with the foundation . From February 2015, the 13 to 20 m long reinforced concrete piles for the foundations were produced. The steel and glass elements of the tower were prefabricated in France and the Netherlands as well as in Great Britain. After the foundation had been poured, construction of the precast tower could begin in May 2015. The American company Jacobs Engineering Group was responsible for the engineering implementation as well as various inspection work and other services.

Construction progress in August 2015 with falsework

On June 11, 2015, the first of a total of two barges arrived on Brighton Beach. He brought the cylindrical tower segments prefabricated in the Netherlands from Rotterdam by sea directly to the construction site. The total of 17 cylindrical steel segments were 4 to 12 meters high and were unloaded from the ship using an almost 100 meter high and 200 ton heavy lattice boom crane with crawler chassis and derrick boom and hoisted to the tower construction site just 85 meters away. The barge also brought falsework sections to the site. The tower grew up along the falsework as an auxiliary construction. The segments were each mounted under the already assembled part of the tower and then everything was lifted together with a hydraulic press. In this way the tower grew by pasting the segments from below. To insert the last segment, 980 tons had to be lifted. The cylindrical parts with masses between 45 and 85 tons were screwed together with a total of 1336 bolts . The bolts used in the tower alone weigh 30 tons. The maximum tower height was reached on August 23, 2015. The assembly time for the steel column was ten weeks. Then the falsework was dismantled.

In a next step, the tower five millimeters thick, bent aluminum was panels disguised.

In January 2016, five people broke into the construction site of the i360 and jumped from the top of the unfinished tower as base jumpers . As a result, the security measures were increased. In July 2016, all construction work on the tower was completed.

Since opening

The British Airways i360 opened on August 4, 2016 in the presence of Prince Philip . At 173 meters, it is by far the tallest structure in the county of Sussex and, alongside the 24-storey and 102-meter high high-rise Sussex Heights by Swiss-British architect Richard Seifert from the 1960s, the second over 100 meters high structure in Brighton. The cost of the structure was put at around £ 46 million. In the days before, representatives of the press as well as representatives from politics and business had the opportunity to climb the tower. The fireworks scheduled for the opening ceremony had to be postponed due to bad weather. The one millionth passenger was welcomed on March 11, 2019.

The British Airways i360 has made headlines due to technical failures since it opened. After more than 150 guests got stuck for two hours in September 2016, similar incidents were repeated over the next few months.

description

Location and situation

View from the sea front towards i360 and Regency Square

The tower stands on King's Road directly on the beach at the height of the West Pier, which was built in 1866 and burned down in 2003 . A skeletal remnant of the pier, isolated from the shore, is located a few hundred meters upstream in the sea. The tower creates an optical line of sight to Regency Square opposite King's Road and completes the open four sides of the square. The height of the structure was also chosen deliberately. On the one hand it corresponds to the length of the rectangular, 66 meter wide Regency Square and on the other hand it is half the length of the West Pier. To the northeast of Regency Square is the Sussex Heights, a 102 meter high residential tower and until the construction of the i360, the tallest structure in the city of Brighton.

A flat, rectangular space at street level belongs to the area of ​​the tower. It is separated from the public sidewalk by a turnstile and a glazed wall and serves in particular as a waiting area for passengers. The middle of the square has a hollow so that the movable viewing platform sinks into it up to the exit height. Entry and exit between the square and the pulpit are at ground level and barrier-free . Below this square are the cash register, a souvenir shop and a restaurant. This lower level facing the beach can be reached via stairs on the side. The pulpit can approach both the waiting area in the square and the level of the souvenir shop. The entire area of ​​the plant covers an area of ​​2037 square meters.

Design and name

British Airways i360 lettering and logo

The design comes from the architects David Marks and Julia Barfield. The design of the tower, in particular the gondola with the viewing platform, is similar in style and aesthetics to the London Eye, which was also designed by the two architects. According to architect Marks, the “i” stands for “intelligence, innovation and integrity”, the number 360 for the angle of the all-round view. The architects understand the design of the i360 as a modern interpretation of the design of English seaside resorts in the Victorian era .

The original name was Brighton i360 , but it has been changed to the name of the sponsor , British Airways .

Apart from the name, a number of items and objects also bear the British Airways brand , for example the deckchairs and parasols as well as the clothes of the hostesses who accompany the tower driveway.

Architecture and technology

The British Airways i360 consists of a slim steel shaft that rises a total of 161.75 meters. On top of it is a 11.70 meter high spire, which increases the total height of the structure to 173.45 meters, making it the tallest structure in Sussex . With its special architecture of the mobile pulpit, it resembles the type of gyro tower .

View inside the observation cabin

The cylindrical tubular steel column has a diameter of 3.9 meters. This is surrounded by the viewing cabin and its underframe. The cabin has the shape of a hollow torus with an ellipse as the generatrix. The underframe is guided vertically in four grooves in the tower up to a maximum height of 138 meters. The cabin with an outer diameter of around 18 meters and a height of 4.70 meters can accommodate 200 people and contains a bar. With an average weight of 75 kilograms, this results in a payload of 15 tons for the gondola. It weighs a total of 93 tons, including the 20-ton chassis .

The glazed gondola consists of 24 individually arched fields with twelve circular arc-shaped inner wall surfaces and two doors. The ascent principle is more like that of a cable car than that of an elevator . The cables and counterweights are housed inside the steel column. Around 50% of the energy required for the ascent of the gondola is obtained via an energy recovery system during the descent, according to other sources it should even be over 60%. The viewing gondola moves both up and down at a constant speed of 0.4 meters per second and is driven by a 160 kW motor. In order to prevent fogging in the glazed pulpit as well as cold and drafts, twelve air curtain systems in the smallest format ensure appropriate air circulation and can move up to 2150 cubic meters of air per hour. The systems in the upper pulpit area, between 1 meter and 1.5 meters long, are concealed by a galvanized steel housing and, with their thermal output of 9 kW, ensure pleasant temperatures even in winter.

The pay booth

At the foot of the tower is a square, single-storey base building (The Beach Building) , which is an optical extension of Regency Square. The height of this beach building bridges the sloping beach with the street level of King's Road. The flat roof of the basic house is accessible and surrounded by a railing . In the middle of the roof is the entry and exit for the mobile pulpit. At the same time, there are two replicas of the West Pier toll booths on the roof ends of the base building. They are a slightly modernized reminiscence of the traditional buildings from 1866 that stood on the West Pier and which the replica is reminiscent of in almost the same place.

In order to keep the tower stable even in strong winds, similar to the London Eye, vibration dampers weighing around three tons counteract the wind movements, which can be operated differently depending on the situation. The steamers contain small sealed boxes that are about twice the size of cookie jars. These stainless steel boxes are half filled with a frost-proof liquid. They have slightly different shapes so that they vibrate in different modes of vibration at different frequencies. A total of 50 of these damping elements were distributed on three different levels of the tower. Most of them sit on the uppermost part of the tower shaft, as this is where the highest damping force is required.


Brighton, British Airways i360 Tower (30982757754) .jpg
View from i360 Brighton 7.jpg
View of i360 in August 2016 - 5.jpg


British Airways i360 (from left to right): Entrance area as a beach house, view of Brighton with the residential high-rise Sussex Heights from the pulpit, detailed view of the tower cage

use

Visitors waiting in front of the British Airways i360

The beach building at the base is designed in such a way that, in addition to its main purpose as a lookout tower, it also offers a souvenir shop and a restaurant (Belle Vue) . One room should be reserved for art exhibitions and further rooms should be available for events and celebrations. For events, it offers space for 10 to 800 people, depending on requirements. The tower's premises can also be used for holding weddings. A children's and play area was also completed in the beach building in 2017.

In the evening the Nyetimer Sky Bar opens in the gondola . For this reason, the length of stay was extended to 30 minutes. One of the rebuilt toll booths on the roof of the beach building is used as a tea house. Both the base house and the observation tower are barrier-free .

Architectural classification

The British Airways i360 is an observation tower that resembles the principle and appearance of a gyro tower . With its mobile pulpit, it has a special position compared to other observation towers. In contrast to the gyro tower, which is also usually found as a ride in amusement parks, the cockpit of the British Airways i360 does not turn. Towers with mobile pulpits outside of amusement parks are accordingly rare.

Outside of amusement parks, for example, there are gyro towers in Rotterdam with the 185-meter-high Euromast , which is a combination of a conventional observation tower with a steel structure on top of its tower structure, on which the mobile observation pulpit is located. The 53-meter-high Jurassic Skyline gyro tower in Weymouth , southwest England , which opened in 2012 and is also not part of an amusement park, can best be compared to the British Airways i360. However, the tower in Weymouth was permanently closed in 2017 after a technical incident involving the rescue of people and due to the previously lower number of visitors, sold to another operator and is to be dismantled.

reception

Irritations about the world record

Top o 'Texas Tower

With a height-to-width ratio of 41.4: 1, the tower is an extremely slim construction. Before the opening, various media reported that the British Airways i360 would hold a construction world record with it. These reports that the i360 held a record recognized by the Guinness Book turned out to be false. The two engineers Tim Ibell from the University of Bath and Pierfrancesco Cacciola from the University of Brighton made a request for the recognition of a world record, which is likely to be the basis of the erroneous reports. In fact, the record has been held since September 27, 2013 by the Top o 'Texas Tower , which was built for the State Fair, a 24-day festival in Dallas , Texas near the Cotton Bowl Stadium . Its height-to-width ratio of 47.61: 1 exceeds that of the British Airways i360 - but at 152.4 meters it is also slightly lower than the tower in Brighton and carries a maximum of 100 passengers.

A later attempt by the operator to name the British Airways i360 as the “highest observation tower with a movable viewing platform” failed because of the British competition regulatory organization Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). The ASA argued that there were several counterexamples around the world, citing that there were observation towers with rotating pulpits; In addition, the Euromast in Rotterdam is also a tower with a vertically rising pulpit.

Prizes and awards

The i360 illuminated in the evening, Sussex Heights in the background on the left

Since the British Airways i360 opened, the structure has received over 20 awards and accolades.

In addition to awards in the tourism and business sector, the tower received the British Construction Industry Award in 2017 . This honored the innovative structural performance and the extraordinary height-width ratio, as well as the architectural design and its economic efficiency.

In the same year, the i360 also won the Supreme Award for Structural Engineering Excellence awarded by the Institution of Structural Engineers (IStructE) . The IStructE also paid tribute to the special design, which even represents a world record. In order to achieve this, structural innovations were necessary that dampen the structure in a suitable manner. This achieved a natural frequency of less than 0.2 Hertz . The efficient construction was also praised as well as the fact that over 60% of the energy required for the upward journey was recuperated by the previous downward journey . The Royal Institute of British Architects also awarded a national prize in 2017 . The tower's nocturnal lighting won the Scottish Design Award in the lighting category in 2018 .

Web links

Commons : British Airways i360  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Plans for Spire to Top the Tower ( Memento August 3, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), britishairwaysi360.com, accessed April 15, 2019.
  2. ↑ British Pathé: Brighton Observation Tower Planned AKA Brighton Tower Planned 1964 , soundless video contribution (2:10 minutes), accessed on July 17, 2019
  3. ↑ Skydeck - the precursor to the i360 ( memento of July 18, 2019 in the Internet Archive ), blog post by John Keenan of March 11, 2019, accessed on November 19, 2020.
  4. ↑ a b c d Award for tall or slender structures in: Structural Awards 2017 (PDF), pp. 47–48, (saved on web.archive.org) last accessed on July 18, 2019.
  5. ↑ BBC News - UK - England - Sussex - Brighton i360 work set for June . In: BBC News , April 2nd, 2007. Accessed April 15, 2019  .
  6. ^ The Brighton i360's funding explained ( June 8, 2017 memento on the Internet Archive ), britishairwaysi360.com, accessed April 15, 2019.
  7. ^ Hundreds sign online petition against i360 loan agreement , theargus.co.uk, accessed April 15, 2019.
  8. ^ Petition against i360 , Change.org , accessed April 15, 2019.
  9. ↑ a b 'It's a bonkers, outsized flagpole': Brighton greets the world's tallest moving observation tower , theguardian.com, accessed on April 15, 2019.
  10. ↑ High price to pay? Observation tower divides Brighton , telegraph.co.uk, accessed April 15, 2019.
  11. ↑ “The i-sore”: Will Brighton's new i360 observation tower ever win over the public? , citymetric.com, accessed April 15, 2019
  12. ↑ Our history ( memento of January 6, 2018 in the Internet Archive ), britishairwaysi360.com, accessed on April 15, 2019.
  13. ↑ Jacobs Plays Key Role in British Airways i360 Observation Tower , accessed July 18, 2019
  14. ↑ Brighton i360 beach landings start build of worlds tallest vertical cable-car , naturalpr.biz, accessed April 15, 2019.
  15. ↑ a b c d Brighton i360 - Beach Landing June 2015 - Technical Q&A ( August 3, 2016 memento in the Internet Archive ), britishairwaysi360.com, accessed April 15, 2019.
  16. ↑ The jacking tower explained , britishairwaysi360.com, accessed April 15, 2019.
  17. ↑ Base jumpers leap off Brighton i360 tower , bbc.com, January 23, 2016, accessed April 15, 2019.
  18. ↑ The Telegraph : Prince Philip opens the Brighton i360, the world's first vertical cable car , article from October 28, 2016, last accessed on April 15, 2019.
  19. ↑ Sussex Heights website , accessed December 4, 2020
  20. ↑ emporis.com: Tallest buildings in Brighton , accessed December 4, 2020
  21. ↑ britishairwaysi360.com: How much did it cost to build? , accessed December 3, 2012
  22. ↑ i360 fireworks postponed Because of weather , brightonandhovenews.org of 4 August 2016 called on April 15 of 2019.
  23. ↑ ukinbound.org: British Airways i360 welcomes one millionth guest , article from March 11, 2019, last accessed on April 15, 2019.
  24. ↑ Express: 150 people stuck on Brighton i360 for hours released moments after emergency toilet found , article from September 8, 2016, accessed on July 15, 2019
  25. ↑ BBC: Boss of Brighton's i360 quits before crucial meeting , October 4, 2018 article, accessed July 15, 2019.
  26. ↑ Brighton i360 tower now tallest building in Sussex , August 2015 press release, accessed April 15, 2019.
  27. ↑ a b architecture.com: British Airways i360. RIBA South East Award 2017. , last accessed on April 11, 2019
  28. ^ Observation tower in the seaside resort of Brighton: Flying Donut , Spiegel Online August 3, 2016, accessed April 15, 2019.
  29. ^ West Pier - i360 . Archived from the original on March 10, 2007. Retrieved April 15, 2019.
  30. ↑ Vertical pier as a new landmark , orf.at of August 3, 2016, accessed April 15, 2019.
  31. ↑ Brighton i360 review - London Eye team goes pole dancing at the seaside , The Guardian, August 2, 2016, accessed April 15, 2019.
  32. ↑ It's official: Brighton i360 tower is already the tallest structure in Sussex , accessed April 15, 2019.
  33. ↑ a b Nyetimber Sky Bar , britishairwaysi360.com, accessed on August 3, 2016th
  34. ↑ Decision to remove wind turbine explained: i360 will now save more energy , britishairwaysi360.com, accessed April 15, 2019.
  35. ↑ baunetzwissen.de : British Airways i360 observation tower in Brighton , accessed on December 4, 2020
  36. ↑ a b The beach building ( memento of September 14, 2017 in the Internet Archive ), britishairwaysi360.com, accessed on April 15, 2019.
  37. ↑ britishairwaysi360.com: Delivering dampers , article dated December 19, 2014, last accessed April 15, 2019.
  38. ↑ britishairwaysi360.com: Weddings , accessed December 4, 2020
  39. ↑ BBC: Weymouth Eye seafront tower opens to the public , June 22, 2012. Accessed August 10, 2019.
  40. ↑ Jurassic Skyline website , accessed April 15, 2019.
  41. ↑ BBC: Weymouth's Jurassic Skyline viewing tower to be removed , August 2, 2019. Accessed August 9, 2019.
  42. ↑ BBC: Brighton i360 not the 'world's tallest moving observation tower' , article from March 7, 2018, accessed on July 15, 2019
  43. ^ British Airways i360 Breaks World Record , accessed April 15, 2019.
  44. ↑ Most slender tower , guinnessworldrecords.de, accessed on August 4, 2016.
  45. ↑ culturemap.com: Get your thrills on the $ 12 million adrenaline rush now open at Fair Park , July 2, 2013 article, accessed July 15, 2019
  46. ↑ Brighton & Hove Independent: i360 rapped for 'tallest observation tower' claims , article March 7, 2018, accessed August 12, 2019
  47. ↑ British Airways i360: Awards , last accessed April 15, 2019.
  48. ↑ British Construction Industry Awards 2017 (PDF), p. 33, last accessed on April 11, 2019.
  49. ↑ Scottish Design Awards 2018 , last accessed April 15, 2019.