Retail buildings – Steelconstruction.info

From Steelconstruction.info

Retail buildings are of five basic types; down-town shopping centres, single storey supermarkets, warehouse-type distribution centres , mixed use retail and commercial/residential buildings in which the retail units generally occupy the ground floor and superstores. The retail sector is very competitive and therefore the attributes of steel construction to deliver flexible, lightweight solutions fast and cost effectively makes steel the material of choice for the sector.

Customer experience is paramount in retail buildings. Using steel construction, retail floor plans are maximised giving retailers the maximum scope to configure store layouts to maximise sales to their targeted customers.

Many retailers, particularly supermarkets, are owner occupiers and therefore, unlike some other commercial sectors, they have a greater interest in whole life cost and added value through sustainable design. Consequently, the retail sector is leading in the procurement of sustainable, low carbon buildings.

Large retailers also procure large distribution centres and many supermarket chains are diversifying and consequently procuring mixed-use buildings that for planning reasons often include a number of upper floors of residential use.

Main articles: Cost of structural steelwork, Single storey industrial buildings, Cost planning through design stages, Cost comparison study

The principal building design issues that affect the chosen solution in the retail sector include:

The different building types of the retail sector may be defined as:

The scale and form of retail buildings differs considerably, as do the constraints on their construction. The drivers in these five building sectors are described below. In all cases, early return on the investment is crucial to the success of the project, but this over-riding commercial requirement is also dependent in many ways on the environment that is created, and hence by the shopping experience. This means that architectural input is important despite the functional use of the space that is required.

A good example of the architectural use of steel construction was in the recently competed Victoria centre in Belfast which involved creating covered pedestrian streets and a cupola viewing gallery using a tubular steel space frame spanning between multi-storey steel framed retail buildings. The covered street-scape and viewing platform is shown.

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Retail buildings - Steelconstruction.info