Aluminium upper floors to support progressive ways of working for students and 141 members of staff , ranging from academics and lecturers to heads of department . At third floor , a large open-plan PhD research office is provided alongside communal staff facilities .
Formerly housing the university ’ s senior leadership team , department of estates and facilities management services , the Wilfred Brown Building has been reinvented as a modern , vibrant , student-focused teaching and learning facility .
Key learning spaces for the Department of Computer Science are delivered across all levels in the building , including a 60-seat IT laboratory , a digital technology workshop and two technology-rich digital economy laboratories , which are connected via a retractable wall . Several research labs are distributed across the upper floors , while a dedicated cyber security laboratory is created at third floor in support of current research projects .
Initial appraisal of the existing building , alongside interrogation of the university ’ s aspirations for the project , quickly established the need to replace the previous envelope with a modern façade system .
Crucial to this decision was the need to significantly upgrade the performance of the external fabric , coupled with the aspiration to deliver a ‘ world class ’ gateway building , marking the establishment of a new college and the strategic objective to enhance provision of STEM outreach facilities .
The facade strategy was conceived as an environmentally driven design response to the building ’ s orientation and its influence on the required performance of the façade . The completed facade achieves a significant improvement in performance through the enhanced thermal properties of the envelope , exceeding current air tightness requirements , improving the efficiency of the building services installation , and addressing solar energy transmittance through the installation of high performance glazing in response to site conditions .
Alongside the wider sustainability strategy , enhancement of the envelope contributes to an improvement of 31.8 % over Building Regulations Part L requirements , while the improvement over a baseline case representing the existing building is estimated to be 49.7 %.
Central to the viability of the project was the retention and alteration of the existing structural frame . Being marginally larger in plan , the façade extending a metre outwards of the existing footprint to the west , and with the addition of an extra storey at roof level , the structural capacity of the existing frame was maximised , the existing frame containing very little redundancy in its original configuration . Through thoughtful reuse of the existing building the scheme has extended the anticipated lifespan of the Wilfred Brown Building by 50 years .
Working with an existing frame provided considerable environmental and sustainable benefits to the scheme , retaining the embedded carbon associated with the concrete . Central to the services strategy was the use of exposed concrete soffits to regulate the internal temperature ,
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the scheme has extended the anticipated lifespan of the Wilfred Brown Building by 50 years
’ using the thermal mass of the frame to control temperature fluctuations via the thermal flywheel effect .
This relies on heat being absorbed into the concrete during occupied hours and the slabs subsequently being cooled out of hours via fresh air introduced through automated opening lights in the Kawneer façade controlled by the Building Management System ( BMS ). This also enables spaces to be pre-cooled prior to the next working day .
During construction , utilising an existing structural frame provided a significant reduction in traffic movement , with added benefits in the reduced noise and dust associated with the works in a live education environment .
The Kawneer systems were installed by a team of up to 20 operatives from approved specialist sub-contractor JPJ Installations for main contractor ARJ Construction .
In addition to retaining the existing structure , several further environmental measures were employed to harness renewable energy sources . The south elevation complements the roof-mounted PV array with two storeys of clear BIPV glazing in the Kawneer curtain wall , generating clean electricity for use within the building , whilst the demonstration plant room at ground floor houses both a biomass boiler and a ground source heat pump - using a reversible pump to harness groundbourne temperatures for use in heating or cooling the building . The ground source heat pump includes an additional borehole for academic research and where possible , passive design strategies ( including natural ventilation ) have been used throughout .
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CLEARVIEW-UK . COM MARCH 2022
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