The old and the new: Dorma system transforms 19th century hampshire barns

Situated in mid-Hampshire with the ‘Watercress’ steam railway close by, Sutton Manor, like so many dairy farms, has adopted contemporary farming methods. In the process, many of the traditional buildings that served it over the years have fallen into disuse. Farming is a tough enough business these days for useful assets to lie idle, so the local landowner and diary farmer took a hard look at how the redundant buildings might be transformed into working assets again – and a rural business centre seemed to provide the ideal solution.

Naturally any conversion had to be sympathetic to the setting and surrounding countryside. Chartered Architects and Town Planners, Pro Vision, based at Hursley near Winchester, have a great deal of experience with this type of project and their brief was to transform the two existing 19th century barns - with brick and flint walls and natural slate roofs – into an appropriate business centre.

A barn fit for business

Key design considerations were that the refurbished premises should provide an open and well lit space conducive to new business activities, but that the character of the original buildings should be retained and enable views out over open countryside, including the ‘Watercress’ line itself in the distance. To achieve this and help exaggerate the dramatic spaces one can achieve within such structures, the north elevation of the smaller barn has a large structural glass wall from Dorma installed so that the original hay loading bay could be expressed in its entirety and the integrity of the barn retained.

The Manet Spider

The Manet Construct System, from Dorma, makes it possible to connect glass-to-glass, or glass-to-building structure when meeting the demanding requirements of structural glazing systems. A major feature of the range is the Manet Spider, a design element with a highly polished stainless steel finish, which is available in one to four arm variants. The Manet Construct Spider improves both design and connection safety as a result of its articulated joint which has a three dimensional movement in the Spider hub. This helps to compensate for any building tolerances in the substructure by absorbing the load at all the fixing points. While the resilient single-point fixings compensate for thermal expansion and glass panel deformation. The single-point fixing (available in two sizes) is the key to the system and controls the transmission of tensile and compressive forces to the substructure. The fixing features an interfacial elastomer pad which dissipates stresses in the glass due to deformation and ensures optimum stress distribution under critical loading in the fixing area, as a result, large glass spans can be achieved – 12m on this occasion.

Versatile and contemporary

Scot Alan Masker of Pro Vision comments: ‘The very contemporary Manet Construct System, through its versatility, was key in achieving results that respect the character of the existing structures and in fact complement and enhance their traditional qualities’.

An unusual feature of the Sutton Manor Farm project is that Manet Construct connectors attach the glass fins on the inside of the building and oak beams on the outside. The Manet connectors were adapted to the individual site application using bespoke threaded adapters, designed and manufactured by Dorma and used by specialist structural glass installers, Casu Consulto Ltd of Leeds to connect the Manet Spiders to the external oak beams.

Casu Consulto were selected as the preferred installer for this project as a result of their 25 years experience in structural glazing. Chris Holden, managing director of Casu Consulto Ltd, who use Dorma exclusively for all of their structural glass components comments, ‘We are confident that the Dorma range of products is versatile enough to provide all our projects solutions. The quality and flexibility of the Dorma products enabled us to meet both the aesthetic and technical demands for this project’.