Shedding the L-plates

Not only a bit of a head-turner in terms of design, the new City Campus East at the University of Northumbria also easily surpasses Part L targets by at least 15%.

In fact, the new £100m scheme not only boasts significantly lower CO2 emissions than the Part L 2006 notional building, but it has also been named Low Carbon New Build Project of the Year at the recently launched Low Carbon Performance Awards.

Haden Young carried out the m&e installation on Atkins Design’s architectural magnum opus, which had sustainability as a guiding theme from its very inception. Building services engineer Faber Maunsell was responsible for the Part L thermal modelling, lighting, IT & communications, security and sustainability aspects.

The University’s most recent addition specialises in design, law and business and has been constructed on the site of an old cinema in central Newcastle. Around 9000 students will occupy the 16 000 m2 Business School, the School of Law and the 8000 m2 School of Design, which are interconnected via an impressive formation of courtyards, boulevards and an iconic link bridge.

In keeping with the university’s brief to create an environmental flagship, the project has created a strong marriage between structural elements and services.

This has been achieved through an impressive array of energy reduction features, including high-efficiency condensing boilers and thermal-wheel heat recovery with the ventilation systems.

The law and business building has been constructed to make maximum use of natural daylight via a lightwell which pierces the roof structure and extends down to ground-floor level. This has been supplemented by the use of a translucent material called Kalwall on exterior walls facing into the courtyard. As well as providing high levels of thermal insulation, Kalwall uses millions of embedded prismatic glass fibres to refract daylight and provide a balanced, diffuse wash of glare-free, usable light.

Artificial lighting has been chosen to provide maximum efficiency and is linked to a site-wide lighting management system to minimise energy consumption. Other services are linked to an advanced building management system to ensure that they are fine-tuned to deliver optimum performance. Throughout the site, rainwater is collected for use in flushing toilets.

On their east and west elevations, above second-storey level, the buildings feature facades of aluminium tube and three-dimensional concave and convex, curving, stainless-steel mesh to provide shading more cost-effectively than an active brise-soleil. Based on detailed environmental modelling, the mesh panels are laid at staggered angles and at various pitches to optimise their shading potential while maintaining comfort conditions.

The development illustrates how sustainability can play a central role in the process of urban regeneration

The outer stainless-steel mesh panels stand proud of the building, supported on a galvanised-steel, low-strung support structure. Behind these, walkways provide maintenance access to the curtain walling behind. The mesh panels continue above roof level to protect and visually shield the extensive open-rooftop plant areas.

“The southern elevation was initially developed as a solar hot-water collector, with the shading formed from 58 mm, aluminium-evacuated-tube, solar, hot-water collectors,” explains Faber Maunsell’s City Campus East project manager David Burton. “The 1800 m2 area was calculated to provide up to 340 000 kWh of useful energy, which equated to around £8700 in equivalent gas costs.

“With full consideration of the building programme, costs and buildability, the final design incorporated the aluminium tube shading. The solar hot-water generation has been located within the law and business roof-plant area to provide coverage of 55 m2 and expected annual energy production of 23 000 kWh per year. It uses standard, solar hot-water collectors,” he continues.

Lighting across the facade not only reinforces the architectural presence of the multifarious structures, but also conveys the university’s brand through use of dynamic-feature projector lighting.

Five-storey, colour-changing lighting illuminates the stair-hub towers, which are constructed of semi-transparent Reglit cladding. This is supplemented by plaza lighting, which incorporates ground-recessed luminaires and energy-efficient projectors.

Control of external lighting forms an integrated part of the overall DALI control system, which uses a DALI/DMX sub-system for the dynamic-feature lighting.

The central lightwell enables daylight harvesting: the light pierces through the structure. High-powered, colour-changing projectors bring a dynamic glow to the rooftop lightwell, which creates a visible statement at night.

If further evidence of the university’s ‘green’ motivation were needed, it managed to recycle 95% of demolition materials from the site, so that only the remaining 5% needed to go to landfill sites. Subsequently, it also exceeded all previous targets by recycling 75% of materials during construction of the building. It used the rubble as a sub-base and recycled all glass and scrap metal.

By closely integrating services and overall building design right from the early design stages, the designers have created a building that has proved to be a practical demonstration of the core principles of sustainable design, while also delivering to the client a building that will provide low cost of ownership into the future.