Giovanni Vigano’, design engineer in the Singapore office, confirms Web Structures has been invited to work, once again, on an island resort in the Seychelles.
High end hotel groups will often hire Web Structures before they have purchased an uninhabited island to use its ecological engineering expertise to determine if it can be sensitively developed into a luxury resort with minimal impact on the natural environment.
Giovanni says: “We have worked on as many as 20 resorts around the world with respected operators like Four Seasons And Hilton, often in areas with highly sensitive and fragile eco-systems.
“Our focus is always to be environmentally responsible and our brief is to protect and preserve the sensitive local environment.
“Working with our sister company Web Earth, we devise engineering solutions that mean these tourism projects can benefit the local economy and have a minimal impact on the local eco-system.
“We typically look to use rain harvesting and other forms of water storage, water sensitive drainage systems, balanced earthwork and other minimal impact designs to overcome sensitive infrastructure challenges.”
Web Structures’ work within natural environments also includes complex bridge designs necessary to connect new resorts to existing highways networks.
Two years ago, as part of a luxury golfing resort, Web Structures designed a 500m long-span bridge without touching the Tiracol River in Goa, India, and allowing boats and yachts to pass underneath. Further engineering challenges included a 40 metre difference in height between the banks of the river and the type of ground the bridge’s foundations would have to be laid on.
Dr Hossein Rezai, Web Structures group director, says: “One of the main challenges of this project was working in such a way that the existing community was not disturbed by its new resort neighbour.
“Whenever we are asked to engineer a project near an existing community, we always look to strike the right balance. We do not want to disturb the village and its people who, in this case, worked the local land and fished the waters.
“The idea was that the resort could enhance the livelihoods of the people living there. That was the challenge that was set for us; it is always about enhancing and not destroying.”
These challenges were all overcome and today Web Structures has a new bridge design to work on. Working with SCDA Architects, the competition brief is to design a delicate pedestrian bridge in Manila joining two towers together.
We will provide more details and design drawings of our ‘bridge work’ in a future Web Sight Newsletter.
Web Structures’ full understanding of the impact of construction on the environment and local ecologies sees its engineers in constant demand to advise on the feasibility of sensitive projects.
In quarters 3 and 4, the offices in Singapore, KL, Shanghai and London have been appointed to work on luxury tourist resorts, and long-span bridges, as well as some super-tall and mega-tall towers.