FMJ.CO.UK UAL CASE STUDY
DECEMBER/JANUARY 2022 25
Says Damian Wines, Associate Director
– Buro Happold: “Previously we’d worked
on the Olympic Park and the stadium. We
started the East Bank project around six
years ago and following a long design phase,
we’ve been working onsite on this project
for around two years.”
At its completion, the building will provide
36,000m˜ of teaching, learning and practical
facilities across 15 floors, bringing together
6,500 students and staš from six sites into
one campus. An important proviso for the
project is in ensuring the building
remains on track to achieve
a BREEAM Outstanding
certification as
stipulated by
clients LLDC
and their
partner
London
College of
Fashion,
UAL.
Explains
Ian Lane,
Associate
Director
(Sustainable
Operations) –
University of the
Arts London: “BREEAM
outstanding was something we called
for in the design brief and I think we’ll be
able to prove through this building that if
you put that into the brief from day one it
can be achieved without any identifiable
additional costs.”
The Buro Happold team was challenged
to develop a framework to achieve the
BREEAM goal within a building that will oš er
a complex range of facilities accommodating
many diš erent uses and specialist spaces,
for instance, technical workshops for
printing, prosthetics, hairdressing and
textiles. To achieve this - the Buro Happold
team, its clients and end users have worked
together to map out the use of each space
over typical days and semesters to create
an accurate energy model that provides the
best range of services that will help promote
workflow and creativity.
Explains Wines: “Stage 2 describes the
early design stage, which is benchmarked,
but at stages 3 and 4 you go into the detail of
the use of the space. For example, how the
building is going to be used. If the students
have a typical 10-week semester, during the
early stages of the semester some areas are
used less frequently, but towards the end
of the 10 weeks, the students might have
exams and assignments and may use certain
At this stage we’ve got one
of the largest naturally ventilated
educational buildings in London and
we’ve proved the concept that you can
do natural ventilation in a city, so this
is a celebration of that concept,
but it’s not fully proved until
it’s in use.”
spaces more intensively – so all this
information was agreed and
discussed with UAL
to help inform the
running of the
building.”
Wines adds:
“Daylighting
is absolutely
key to
achieve
the carbon
savings on
the plan,
but also for
health and
wellbeing so we
measured glazing
ratios, as there’s always
a challenge between enough
open windows and glazing to get
the natural ventilation to work and too
much sun, which is why we carried out an
overheating analysis, a glaze analysis and a
glare analysis.”
Following extensive modelling and
analysis, a 22 per cent reduction in carbon
dioxide emissions has been achieved, as
well as a 19 per cent reduction in embodied
carbon over a 60-year lifecycle. As Lane
explains, the idea is to not only ensure
sustainability targets are met within the
design and construction phase, but crucially
throughout the lifecycle of the building.
UAL were insistent that lifecycle modelling
adhered to CIBSE’s Technical Manual 54 to
ensure there was little or no performance
gap from design to operation.
©Duncan Campbell
He says: “At this stage we’ve got one of
the largest naturally ventilated educational
buildings in London and we’ve proved the
concept that you can do natural ventilation
in a city, so this is a celebration of that
concept, but it’s not fully proved until it’s
in use.
“We set out quite clearly at the beginning
what we wanted to achieve and there hasn’t
been any ambiguity about that. As we said
on day one we want to achieve BREEAM
outstanding, and we want as much natural
ventilation as possible. If we’d introduced
those things halfway through the design that
would have led to confusion. We arrived here
on site with a fair level of confidence that
these things were achievable as they’re goals
set out at the very beginning.”
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