Troubleshooting for Zaha Hadid Project

Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) have occupied several floors at 101 Goswell Road since 2012, but wanted to reconfigure the space post-covid to reflect new flexible working patterns and promote individual wellness. The new layout needed to provide formal and social meeting areas, as well as a new creative design lab.

To accommodate the new plans, wiring had to be installed under the floor and 1000 new outlets were required. Unfortunately the space was limited and there were initially concerns regarding maintaining the bend radius of the cable (and the electrical integrity).

Installers, Live Innovative Solutions Ltd (LIS) had worked with iDACS to win the project using Datwyler data cabling, and were contacted by the consultants regarding this issue.

Paul Hunter (iDACS Technical Director) visited the site to review the situation, accompanied by Scott Baker (LIS) and Tom Harvey (BW).

Following an examination of the floor boxes it was noted that the problem was a generic one and not specific to Datwyler cable. Due to the shallow nature of the

floor void and the type of floor boxes being used, it appeared to be virtually impossible to adhere to the recommended bend radius guidelines recommend by cabling standards.

Furthermore, due to the limited space additional pressure was being applied to the RJ45 modules, causing the shutters to pop out of the floor box plates.

Paul was confident that the engineers would still achieve a PASS test, due to the excess NEXT headroom capability offered by the high-performance Datwyler cabling system, however, a solution was still required to allow 240v power appliances to be plugged into the adjacent 13amp power outlets; and a modified design was needed to prevent the shutters from popping out of the floor plates.

The power outlet situation was easily resolved by changing the position of the floor plate inserts, to leave a space between the data and electrical sockets. To resolve the bend radius issue for the data points, Paul suggested that the data plates should be replaced with a ‘waved plate’ design. This would provide additional space behind the plate to allow for the installation of Datwyler 6552 CAT6a F/FTP data cable, terminated onto KS-T CAT6a shielded RJ45 modules. The modules attached to the plate using angled LJ6C shutters.

The client was happy with the outcome, but Paul still visited the site towards the end of the project to ensure the installation recommendations were met, prior to issuing a Datwyler 25-year system warranty.