VISION Issue 8 | Page 18

18 Vision Magazine What about design efficiency? Planning a comprehensive animal welfare centre is complex; its functions include administration areas for both permanent staff and the large body of volunteer workers, animal day care, shelter, clinics, training and retail. That meant we had to weigh up such matters as the degree of privacy required, floor area, spatial relationship and so on while always working to a fairly lean budget. In terms of design efficiency the main street elevation faces south and this allowed us to be fairly open in our expression to the street and passing traffic. Do you have a design highlight? Part of the brief is to consider the celebratory process of pet acquisition or happy reunion with a pet in care, but there’s also the tremendously sad part of loss and death. Designing for that range of emotions was a challenge and constraint to deal with the multiple streams of people and emotions that are so much a part of such a place. Hopefully we’ve achieved that appropriate balance that not only functions well, but feels right. You’re glazing program really seems to reflect that interplay between celebration and need for privacy. Yes it does. The glazing at the main entry sweeps down as a diagonal and meets the floor at the clinic waiting area and opens up in the more public area. If there’s a big section of glazing, then that’s where you want the views and it’s a public area. In other areas such as the clinic it’s quite constrained. Were there serendipitous moments during the process that informed the result, or led to the solution? With a building of this sort of complexity you don’t think ‘oh, this should resemble a kidney bean’. We were very open to opportunities; for example, nowhere in the brief were we asked to design a cat colony that faces onto the staircase. Its location results from the construction staging and functional planning. We ended up glazing it and this became the adoption space for the more robust and gregarious cats to be put on show. As it turns out it has become one of the RSPCA’s favourite spaces. What feedback have you received, if not from pets, then their owners and staff? Well interestingly we can extrapolate how the animals feel about the place. The dogs are much quieter now than in their previous accommodation and that’s a very good sign. It’s certainly way less smelly and that makes a difference because dogs, cats and small animals don’t want the odour of other stressed animals. The adoption rate has also gone up significantly because the animals are indoors and better showcased in that climate-controlled airspace. What about the upper levels of glazing? At the higher level of the administration buildings, EVantageTM SuperBlue glass is used less for transparency than as branding gesture. It also provides a degree of privacy. In the dog adoption and dog day care areas below the administration area EVantage Grey is used mainly for thermal performance. We could have used clear glass, but it can be confronting for the dogs when visitors continually tap on the glass. People can still see what’s going on, but it’s slightly obscured for pet welfare. Of an evening, passing traffic get good views of animal training or exhibitions. In the foyer area the big geometric window and display cases have high transparency showcasing retail and campaign displays, in sensitive areas – the clinic for instance is potentially sensitive – translucent glazing ensures natural light and privacy. Any other assistance from Viridian? There was quite a bit of research and discussion about how we could precisely match glass colour. Getting samples on site for our various colours and transparencies was invaluable. What was the most rewarding aspect of using glass on such a project? We layered it just like clothing for comfort and specific needs. There’s no doubt Viridian’s SuperBlueTM is a key here and being present to watch its installation was tremendously satisfying. The day it went in we just knew immediately how perfect it was for this application. We had confidence that it would work well and we weren’t disappointed. It really produces a seamless link for the whole RSPCA brand.