Canada Water Library

The £14 million Canada Water Library was recently opened by Southwark Council on the edge of the Canada Water Basin. It is designed by Piers Gough of CZWG Architects, and is part of a larger scheme to regenerate the area around the Canada Basin. The inverted pyramid shape of the library was the solution to building a large library on a site with a footprint of limited size.

With the buildings close proximity to the to the Canada Water Basin the basement, which houses various items of plant and water tanks, needed to be protected from water ingress from the high water table.

London Concrete supplied 400 m³ of watertight concrete to the project. The Sika® Watertight Concrete System is BBA certified and has a successful track record going back over 50 years, keeping water both in and out of structures, depending on the requirement. It incorporates state-of-the-art Sika admixtures that work within the concrete mix. This produces an extremely effective watertight concrete solution that guarantees the future integrity of the building basement.

Within the system, construction joints were sealed with the SikaSwell® jointing system, which consists of joint sealing profiles that expand on contact with water to seal any voids between adjoining concrete slabs.

Watertight Concrete

Sika® Watertight Concrete
Sika® Admixtures
SikaSwell®