Toowong Academy

Timber and Steel Custom designed Day Beds

About the Project

Urban Fountains and Furniture were excited to work in consultation with Evans Harch and Briggs, Patterson & Buhr to advise on the design and manufacture of 36 Timber and Steel Custom designed Day Beds for the Toowong Mathematics and Science Academy.

Initially Briggs, Patterson Buhr approached us to modify 4 of our Apollo 300 disabled accessible drinking fountains to wall mounted structures. Another 4 of our standard Apollo 300 fountains were to be installed in their standard form. The Architects had an idea of the look that they wanted to achieve with the wall mounted fountains but needed our extensive knowledge of our product to make it a working practical design. We were able to modify the external structure and all the internal fittings so that the only visible part of the fountain was the basin and activator button as requested. There were particular challenges involved during this process including but not limited to:

  • Ensuring that the strength and durability of the fountain was not compromised by altering the existing structure.
  • Ensuring accurate placement of all the internal plumbing structures due to restricted space on installation.
  • Ensuring that all inlet and outlet pipes would connect together.
  • Ensuring effective communication between ourselves, architects, builders and plumbers through drawings, email, fax and telephone communication so that each entity understood the requirements necessary at each building stage for correct installation.

After a successful partnership working on the Apollo 300 and 300-W fountains, Evans Harch soon realised that the Urban Fountains and Furniture team were more than capable to design and fabricate other aspects of their project. Our team worked closely with Evans Harch to manufacture the Toowong Academy Day Beds.

We were given a basic drawing of what their requirements were and from this we were able to offer them advice based on different material types and sizes that would best suit their application working within the parameters of design, time, budget, strength and functionality of the day beds. There were 36 beds in total that needed completion within 8 weeks. This coincided with the Christmas break period which presented many challenges during the stages of fabrication with certain businesses, like the galvanising plant closing for an extensive period.

Other challenges involved during this process included the logistical difficulty of transporting such a large amount of 130kg beds that had to be craned into position on-site; Storing the thousands of pieces of double stained timber which could not be double-stacked due to the possibility of damage from the weight of the other beds; and the time spent coordinating the fabrication, galvanizing and assembly processes to meet deadline and storage and delivery constraints.

“Urban were flexible in allowing one of their products (the Apollo 300 drinking fountain) to be modified in order to fit our design needs at the Queensland Academy of Maths, Science & Technology in Toowong. We are planning on using them again in future projects.”
– Billerwell Daye
BriggsPattersonBuhr Architects

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