Kingsgate Park Sustainability:
richard jobson
the façade of the swimming pool will be made
up of light stone columns interspersed between
the plate-glass windows, giving the look of
a large pavilion.
One of the challenges was creating a new
building that fitted into the look and feel of
the area. ‘We analysed the local architecture
and roughly speaking the bigger, more valuable
buildings tended to be flint, which is grey,’ says
Jobson. ‘We put forward the idea of using a
natural handmade grey brick for the big building,
and are using the multi-red-brick colour that you
see in other buildings in the city for the support
services building. The rooves are made of zinc, in
different colours — copper brown and slate grey.’
From an environmental perspective the
building is first rate. ‘We are going for BREEAM
(Building Research Establishment Environmental
Assessment Method) Excellent which requires
a score of over 70% on various measures,’ says
Abby Bartlett, a sustainability expert working
on the project for property and construction
consultants Ridge and Partners. ‘I usually explain
a BREEAM assessment as a way of trying to strike
a sensible balance between social, economic and
environmental factors,’ she says. ‘For example,
as part of the assessment process we reviewed
where the materials used in the building are
sourced from and whether the manufacturers
have any recognised environmental certification;
we considered the use of water on the scheme,
encouraging low flow sanitary fittings to reduce
the amount of potable water consumed on site;
and we also looked at local site ecology with
schemes encouraged to adopt the ecologists’
recommendations for improving the overall
ecological value of the site.’
40 The Wykeham Journal 2019
‘We have to have a very highly insulated
building,’ adds Jobson. ‘The old pool was not
insulated at all — it lost heat all the time.’ The
new building will run on a mix of low carbon
energy sources — gas and photovoltaic; lights
are all LED and automatically switch off after
use; and great care has been taken with the
cladding and the plate glass to ensure minimal
energy loss.
‘Getting BREEAM Excellent is an
outstanding badge to have — and the College
should be very “shouty” about it. It’s unusual
in the independent schools sector. Most of
the College buildings will be incredibly poor
in terms of energy efficiency — E-rated
probably. This should be the best performing
environmental building on the campus by
a considerable margin.’
We ended our discussion around other ways
to make the look and feel more Wykehamical.
One idea emerged from the murals on the old
buildings — graffiti art depicting Win Coll
Olympians. I suggested that it could be a good
idea to involve the boys in creating something
more permanent like this on the new building.
This could mirror the heritage being kept
elsewhere across the College — think early
‘graffiti art’ of boys’ names scraped into the
woodwork of School. ‘That’s a good idea’, says
Richard. ‘It seems like such a shame that we
cannot keep these. We have not had this in
the project design to date. I’ll bring this up
when I next see them.’ Watch this space.