155 square metres of RonaDeck Resin Bound Surfacing was applied to the internal courtyard of Queens Court, a new affordable housing block built on the site of the old Queens Hall, a once popular music venue in Widnes.
The housing scheme was designed for Halton Housing Trust by award winning Liverpool architects, Denovo Design. Forrest Construction was the main contractor for the project which comprised 17 apartments with car parking and associated landscaping.
The new affordable apartments were built on the site of the iconic Queens Hall music venue, which had hosted many bands including The Beatles, The Stone Roses and The Happy Mondays but was demolished in 2012 following a fire. Part of the brief for the design was to commemorate the sites musical heritage, so the building includes a full height showcase art work commemorating some of the many acts that performed there and colourful guitar string louvres make a bold statement above each of the designated entrances.
The design for the new apartments needed to compensate for the lack of green space in the area and health and wellbeing was key to the design concept. All residents therefore have access to open space, with lounges having either an upper floor terrace; or a Juliet balcony. For ground floor residents an outdoor space was created in the form of a quiet, landscaped internal courtyard.
To create this outdoor space, flowering shrubs and semi-mature trees were planted around the inner courtyard to obscure the car parking bays and to provide a green outlook from the bedrooms. RonaDeck Resin Bound Surfacing Quartz Parallel aggregate mix was laid in a curved shape across the centre of the courtyard, providing a pale contrast to the surrounding greenery and red brick of the building.
The RonaDeck Resin Bound Surfacing system was supplied as a two-component UV stable polyurethane resin and a blend of kiln-dried aggregates; the two resin components were mixed by Elite Surfacing with a slow speed drill and paddle before being added to a forced action mixer containing the Quartz Parallel aggregate blend. The RonaDeck Resin Bound Surfacing was spread to level before smoothing with a steel float.