07 July 2010
£4M Fair Isle Bird Observatory is complete
A 15,000 sq m Bird Observatory built on Fair Isle had now been completed. The new, two storey Fair Isle Bird Observatory (FIBO) replaces an earlier 60 year old structure, and comprises bird watching, commercial, conferencing and accommodation facilities, in a building specially designed to withstand Fair Isle’s severe weather conditions.
FIBO is a sustainable, mainly timber building, comprising 30 high performance, closed panel engineered timber “pods”, fabricated on Orkney. These pods had to be transported by sea for the 12 hour journey to the Fair Isle site and the shipping and erection of the pods had to take place over a 14 day weather window.
To allow for the short building season the new facility was designed using AHW Building Solutions’ pre-fabricated full panel modular system. This utilises James Jones & Sons Ltd FSC accredited JJI Joists extensively as the primary structural elements, providing an A rated green material to maintain the sustainable credentials of the building.
Floors, ceilings and walls were constructed with JJI-Joists and roof fabrication with glulam allowed large span openings where two or more modules are joined to form large public areas. All pods are clad with a highly durable laminated timber cladding called Triboard, also supplied by James Jones, which incorporates a layer of spruce sandwiched between two boards of Siberian larch. This was specified to comply with the client brief for “minimal external maintenance”.
The roof is clad in high performance metal Metro tiles and includes 5Kw of photovoltaic tiles for energy generation.
