Goodson Associates were appointed as part of the design team to deliver the first part of the Dundee City Council’s £500m Waterfront Regeneration scheme. This initial development plot, Plot 6, is located in the south west corner of the waterfront situated adjacent to the new V&A Museum and the RRS Discovery.

The development is a mixed-use commercial scheme with Grade ‘A’ office space, a new 150 bed hotel and 95 apartments over two blocks. Additional ground floor retail space is also earmarked for both the western and eastern facing elevations looking to create a strong café, restaurant and bar area adjacent to Slessor Gardens and the Waterfront Place.

The ground conditions of the site are complex and provided one of the biggest challenges to the project due to its location over an infilled harbour dock. With a mixture of 6-7 storey buildings proposed for the site, a steel encased piled foundation solution was developed with a local piling contractor to take the loads down to the rock below the site but taking cognisance of the likely obstruction associated with remnant harbour walls.

Based on various project specific factors such as constraints on site access and craneage, desire to expose soffits, a mixture of construction materials has been proposed including timber frame for the residential block, composite steel construction for the 6-storey office and 7-storey hotel and steel and precast for the 5/7 storey residential sitting above the retail units.