• AWARDED LOW CARBON BUILDING GRANT

The strategic planning and design of the South Courtyard development. Project value £13m.

We provided strategic planning advice to inform the school at the early project planning stages of the available options. The environmental systems are designed to extract ground water from two bore holes and circulate through the building to maintain comfort and reduce energy and CO₂ emissions by 70%.

Planning Issues

Building visualisations (pre-planning stage) modeled in 3D were produced by ourselves to inform the client and Architects of the servicing arrangements and to assist the planning submission.

Environmental Design

The building uses ground water as its major source of cooling which is extracted from within existing vaults located below Malet Street. This provides a totally renewable form of cooling for the building. Heating is provided via a District Heating Main routed from a Combined Heat and Power plant located within The School of Oriental and African Studies at Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square. With heating and cooling, as the two major energy consumers for the building, both being provided via renewable and highly efficient sources, the total buildings energy CO₂ emissions are minimized.

The premise of the buildings design is to achieve sustainability throughout and in keeping with this principle the ventilation strategies incorporate heat recovery, lighting solutions are all daylight controlled and therein further savings are achieved within these systems.

A photovoltaic array is included as a plant screen at roof level and incorporated into shading solutions in order to minimize solar gain to the internal building environment. This enables a further reduction in the buildings reliance upon fossil fuel generated electricity.