On Arsenal Football Club’s former 4 hectare Highbury Stadium site, Prater has completed the building envelope roofs for a highly desirable new £170 million residential development, Highbury Square. Preserving the old, and introducing the new, the development will attract many more admirers to this legendary home of football.

Highbury Square includes full height glazed facades and raking steel canopy roofs. To retain the atmosphere of the spectator terraces around the landscaped former pitch, ‘green’ engineering and very highly specified interiors are incorporated. The development already has two MIPIM (international property investment) design awards and has also achieved a BREEAM EcoHomes ‘Very Good’ rating.

Specialist building envelope contractor, Prater, completed their roofing work to the East, West and North blocks of the development within the time-critical programme, ensuring that the interior work could start on schedule for the successful final hand-over of the project in mid 2009. During Prater’s 50 weeks on-site, the company supplied and installed Kalzip roofing on the East and West blocks, the rooflights, gable end cladding, parapet cladding, louvres and brise soleil. On the new North block, Prater installed the mono-pitch ‘lean-to’ roof, and mansard cladding.

“The 724 apartment Highbury Square project, which commenced in 2006, has been carefully located within the exact footprint of existing stadium,” commented Maher Muhyeddeen, Project Manager for Sir Robert McAlpine. “Ensuring the exterior construction was completed to time was critical to starting the interior work and project completion.”

The new design has retained the Art Deco facades of the listed (Grade II) East and historic West Stands while demolishing and replacing the North and South Stands. The pitch is retained as 2 acres of modernist landscaped garden over car parking, a gym and power plant, while the new North and South blocks surround private courtyard gardens.

“Working on such a prestigious project, in an iconic setting like Highbury, was very exciting,” commented Prater Project Manager Phil Longley. “To provide natural light to the interiors, we installed 18 Schuco 2m by 4m rooflights. 600 sq.m of aluminum brise soleil was also incorporated to ensure shading from direct sunlight for the upper windows of the blocks.”

The roof construction comprised 3000 sq.m. of Kalzip 50/429 aluminum standing seam roofing (800sq.m. of which was curved), 0.8mm stucco embossed over 1.0mm KD70 structural decking and 200mm Plus 35 mineral wool insulation.

Sustainability features of the development include a combined heat and power plant, 240 solar panels (one of the largest private arrays in Europe) and rainwater harvesting throughout, all contributing to its BREEAM Ecohomes ‘Very Good’ rating.

This project follows the completion of the integrated roofing system on the new Emirates Stadium in March 2006 where Prater installed over 27,200 m2 of roofing, demonstrating their ability to help to deliver a world class stadium.

Email: victoria.otoole@iasb2b.com