Steelwork

The steelwork has arrived and is, quite literally, flying into place.

Rainwater

Only a week after the sunshine that greeted us for the ground breaking ceremony the great British Summer has returned with plentiful rainfall. In the years to come we're going to be able to make good use of this in the Resound building.

Rainwater harvesting tank

We have endeavoured to make the new building as sustainable as possible, with one particular area being the inclusion of a rainwater harvesting system. This system will collect rainwater off the roof the building and reuse it for use flushing WCs and irrigating the external landscaping. So it's good to see that the rainwater harvesting tank has arrived on site, ready to be installed below ground as part of the groundworks.

Time for a cuppa?

With the builders making swift progress on site, and the ground breaking 'champagne moment' a fading memory, there are nodoubt plenty of cups of tea being consumed. This is something we hope to see continuing once the building is complete:The centre of the building will be a Cafe space that will look something like this, although we've yet to choose the counter and furniture design. The aim is for it to be a relaxed space for use when events are happening in the building, rather than a commercial Cafe. We hope it will get plenty of use for various activities and be an area to showcase our creativity, with ample wall space for artwork.

Ground Breaking

This morning saw almost 30 members of Resound Church and local Councillors don Hi-Vis vests and hard hats to join the Cowlin site team for the Ground Breaking ceremony to celebrate that construction is finally underway.

Tim Groves, Ruth McConnell and Joyce Lewis did their bit with with the shiny spades before we raised a glass of celebratory bucks fizz and handed the site back to the Cowlin team to get on with the real work.

Progress Photo No.2

After a couple of weeks of work behind the scenes men and machines have started work on site!


Next week we'll have a ground breaking ceremony to celebrate the start of the work on site and will be raising the profile of the project via the local press - so look out for photos of Tim with a shiny spade!

Progress Photo No.1

This is the first of many photos that we'll be posting to show you the progress on site. Whilst not a lot has happened so far (After all Cowlin have only had three days), we are expecting to see some dramatic changes over the coming months.

The begining

With site work starting tomorrow it seems an appropriate time to do a quick recap of why the Resound project is going ahead:

BCF is a network of three churches in the Bristol area, all joined together by a shared history, common values, and a commitment to enriching the lives of local residents.

Over the past forty years BCF has developed strong links with the communities of Emerson’s Green and surrounding areas within Bristol.

Building on this, we are now redeveloping the site that used to house one of our old church building in Blackhorse Road, Mangotsfield. In desparate need of repair, the old building would have struggled to meet our current and future needs even if we had been able to adequately refurbish it. So we decided to develop the new building, Resound. With intelligent design and a commitment towards environmentally sustainable construction, the building will prove visually stimulating and resource efficient.

As a replacement building it will enable BCF to deliver on its many commitments and ambitions. Particularly the centre will be home to Resound Church, the established Crossways pre-school, and a new community centre for the locality. We hope that Resound will not only become a meeting ground for our church members, but also the familes who use Crossways pre-school, along with the residents of Mangotsfield and Emersons Green.

Construction starts tomorrow 6th June 2011, with the completed building due to be open in February 2012.