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VICTORIAN MILLS
The design brief includes the delivery of the architect’s vision of a 21st century workshop within a Victorian style façade. The idea was to reference the 19th century mill buildings that are commonly seen in industrial parts of UK cities, characterised by an expressed beam and column façade, and a thin-framed window system. However, the design must simultaneously provide modern heating, acoustic and natural ventilation requirements. This stipulation in many ways assisted the team in fulfilling their BREEAM goal.
Says Wines: “The original site had some industrial usage so our design team worked with Mark’s team to come up with the original concept, concentrating on what we could use to flavour the design, with a nod to the industrial age and how that can be utilised for the building.
Image Credit: Duncan Campbell
“If you look at 19th century buildings, most have very generous floor to ceiling heights which allows in lots of good daylight and that’s what we considered from day one, with the adoption of a passive energy management system. This means that even in areas that do have mechanical ventilation at the parameter of the building there are window overrides. This means that in practice, on a nice day if it’s not too hot occupants can open the windows and the cooling system can shut down.”
HEART OF THE BUILDING
One of the most inspirational aspects of the building design is a central atrium and circulation space, known as the ‘Heart’ which architects Allies and Morrison has designed to offer open spaces for study, learning, and social interaction. To help support this design concept the Buro Happold team came up with the construction of a Heart Wall’, a concrete frame consisting of a system of columns and beams which create a boundary between the Heart and the surrounding workshop spaces. This not only provides primary stability for the building but helps ensure a level of flexibility across the central core.
Says Mark Farthing, Programme Director (Major Capital Projects) – University of the Arts London: “The heart space is fulfilling our space brief, but it’s also performing a technical role. From the heart wall to the parameter, these floor plates will remain inherently completely flexible over the life of the building, and can be reconfigured without any change to the structural elements.”
While a key advantage of the internal heart shape is that it allows for mixed mode ventilation; a key challenge was ensuring the acoustics could support open plan teaching, learning and collaboration. To achieve this, the acoustics team employed 3D ray-tracing modelling, which it has utilised to help demonstrate to key stakeholders, including London College of Fashion, UAL and its end users that while a little background noise is beneficial, the use of sound-absorbing material will also be utilised to ensure speech between teachers and their clusters is intelligible without ever becoming prominent or distracting.
Explains Wines: “Acoustics was absolutely fundamental, so while part of the brief was having connected spaces across the spaces, we also needed to get the level of acoustics right. We made a series of site visits to similar facilities so that we all understood what is the right type of acoustic space. We benchmarked what we needed from these spaces and applied it to the heart space for the different type of activities which could take place.
“We modelled all of that, including if there is any informal teaching going on, what is the preferred level of speech intelligibility. Once all of that was modelled we built the acoustic elements into the design to reduce background noise, for example, with the use of carpets and finishing’s such as acoustic panels.”
Along with a design arranged around the central Heart, the structural composition of the building is split between lower and upper levels, with a series of workshop and practical spaces sitting above expansive, column-free areas such as the large lecture theatre on the ground floor. A clever aspect of this design is that certain areas, such as the lecture theatre can be accessed separately from the heart of the building, which helps reduce bottlenecks. It also means that during quiet, out of term times, these areas can be closed to visitors and as just the heart of the building is being utilised, this saves a huge amount on heating, ventilation and lighting.
Once completed, London College of Fashion, UAL will be one of the largest higher education buildings in an urban location to be BREEAM outstanding and deploy natural ventilation. The success of the design and build, and crucially the future of the building post occupancy rests on the hard work of a large project team and diverse group of stakeholders.
Says Wines: “We’ve got several disciplines, the architectural teams and the client side with Mark and all their teams, and one of the bigger challenges has been processing all the information being produced. Ultimately, it’s all about providing the right information at the right time.
“Establishing these clear and open lines of communication has been integral to the success of the project so far, and once the site is open to visitors we’ll revisit the innovative new UAL hub to see how the projects team’s efforts to achieve outstanding BREEAM status is carried onwards throughout its lifecycle.”
