CASE STUDY CIBSE BUILDING PERFORMANCE AWARDS
ENGINEERED TO WIN
Renovation and renewal emerged
as a key theme in this year’s
CIBSE Building Performance Awards.
The Engine Shed, which won both the
Building Performance Champion
and Public Use awards categories,
is a stunning transformation of an
old Ministry of Defence train shed
into the centrepiece of Historic
Environment Scotland’s (HES) new
building conservation and visitor
centre. Similarly, the refurbishment
of the Bartlett School of Architecture’s
1970s-built home won the Retrofit
Project of the Year category, with
an impressive 60 per cent reduction
in energy use per square meter of
floor area.
And the new Institute of Physics
headquarters building, winner of the
Commercial Project of the Year category
24 MAY 2020
has been constructed in London behind a
retained Victorian facade.
What these CIBSE building performance
winners demonstrate is the quality of low
energy design that can be achieved when
an innovative building services consultancy
works with a progressive architecture
practice. These winners also highlight the
importance of the continued involvement of
the design team a er the building has been
occupied in optimising the operation of the
building to work towards design aspirations
being achieved.
HES BUILDING CONSERVATION AND
VISITOR CENTRE
HES’s brief for the conversion of the old
engine shed into the centrepiece of its new
facility in Stirling, Scotland was for the
scheme to be sustainable. As part of the
conversion, the building’s floor plan was
extended with the addition of two new
wings, one on each side of the existing
shed. In line with the project brief, Building
Services Engineer Max Fordham’s design
incorporated a variety of low energy
technologies including a natural ventilation
strategy and an underfloor heating system,
supplied by a ground source heat pump
(GSHP) connected to three 180m deep
boreholes.
In summer the boreholes provide an
e icient source of cooling for the building
by turning the heat pump o but continuing
to run the circulating pump to push water
through the ground loop to provide groundcooled
water to the fan coil units (FCUs) in
some of the spaces. The FCUs have been
designed to operate at a raised temperature
of 12c flow, 17c return.
An additional advantage of this solution
is that heat removed from the building in
summer is stored in the ground, raising its
temperature, so the heat pumps do not
have to work quite so hard in winter to
provide heat.
Winners of this year’s CIBSE Building Performance Awards
demonstrate how innovative engineering and focused postoccupancy
involvement can deliver outstanding projects, says
Sara Kassam, Head of Sustainability Development at CIBSE