Building Isolation - Bridgewater Hall Concert Hall

OVERVIEW

The Bridgewater Hall in Manchester is a 2400 seat concert hall constructed in close proximity to the cities Metrolink tramway. Ground-borne vibration caused by passing trams was highlighted by Arup as going to cause unwanted structural noise within the performance space. To avoid this the building was constructed off 280 number GERB pre-stressable coil spring bearing assemblies positioned on the concrete column heads and tuned with a vertical natural frequency of 3.5Hz.