Week 2: Case study: Lord Byron School

In this amazing case study  I will be looking into the design and construction of the Lord Byron school in Armenia, Gyumri, which represents United Kingdom's contribution to the earthquake in Armenia.
It only took 40-50 second for the earthquake to nearly destroy 3 major cities in Northern Armenia, leaving behind almost half a million people homeless on 7th of December 1988.
Here something significant happened; the first time after 1917 revolution, the USSR leader Mikhail Gorbachev invited the rest of the world for the rescue mission and accepted foreign help in recovery and reconstruction of the cities.

The Prime Minister Mrs Thatcher outlined £5 million for the Lord Byron school, that was implemented by the Department of Education and Science (Building Bulleting Issue 74, 1991).

The most impressive factor was that despite all difficulties, the shaping of this project took only 18 months, from sketch to final-hand in.

Earthquake damage in Gyumri, Armenia 1988

Lord Byron School , block C construction 1989 

Aerial view of the completed building of the School

In accordance to USSR seismic requirements at that time, a one storey series of six pavilions was proposed by British side, with local tuff stone facade, which is generally used for nearly all buildings in Armenia. 

A steel frame structure (unusual for Armenian USSR) was put forward, because of seismic performance, besides the structure allowed for quick prefabrication in UK. Also, it was supposed to be reasonably robust to transport and fast to erect on site.

design proposal for the school by DES: the Plan

design proposal for the school by DES: the Elevations

On the other hand, the Armenian side was to provide local materials, vehicles and equipment, some labor,  construct work on drainage and external services, as well as build the outer skin out of tuff stone. However the tuff idea was later discarded, since it was not feasible for the winter time and an insulated timber wall was used instead. 

The communication between Gyumri and UK offices was severely impaired, as the earthquake destroyed the telecommunications in Gyumri and it took a while until a satellite communication was established.

While Armenians lay down  the fundaments, the British adopted several transportation routes, but the main bulk of materials arrived by sea via Leningrad (currently St. Petersburg).

Transportation routes from UK to Gyumri, Armenia

The steelwork for the blocks was set in motion after the materials have arrived, and the main British workforce was sent on site, who put an incredible effort of 60 hours, 6 days a week in this project.

Lord Byron was a name chosen by Armenians as this English poet is held in high esteem among Armenians because of his interest in Armenian language and culture as well as some translations of Armenian literature.

The enormous endeavour was received by Armenians with profound gratitude and the schools stands in Gyumri until today, as an educational home for many generations of scholars.

In conclusion, the story of this school is absolutely overwhelmingly inspiring; I have studied closely the tactics used on this platforms on remote design and instalment, since prefabrication was used as the main tactics here. This is also a good example that illustrates the importance of communication routes, the choice of materials and understanding of logistics, especially in context of modern abundance of the internet and wireless communication.
Lastly, it is worth mentioning that during this time, Azerbaijani government made it very difficult for the international aid to reach to the suffered zones, by blockading any transportation routes running through the land of Azerbaijan. It is significant in a sense that Nagorno Kharabagh dispute has not blossomed at this point yet, thus I will be trying to investigate the reasons behind this decision of the Azeri government, when I look into the Nagorno Kharabagh and the Armenian-Azeri conflict in the future chapters.