The story of Ready Mix Concrete HQ drawn by Ted Cullinan

Ted Cullinan's drawing  from the C20 Society event describing the RMC HQ

On 2nd June 2014 the Twentieth Century Society organised an event in support of the application for Ready Mix Concrete (RMC) HQ to be listed.

RMC (now Cemex house), completed by Cullinans in 1990, is threatened with demolition having been declared surplus to requirements. The Twentieth Century Society, along with a number of highly regarded architects, engineers and designers, is backing our application to list the building in order to save it.

Film of Ted Cullinan drawing the story of RMC HQ  

The event was introduced by C20 Society Director, Catherine Croft, after which Ted Cullinan drew the story of the design of the building. He presented the story in three chapters:        

• Working with our inheritance
• Working with the climate
• Work, rest and play   

First he described the existing building; listed 17th century Eastley End House, a stable block known as Meadlake House, a late 19th century Surrey style Arts and Crafts house known as The Grange, a lake, protected trees and a number of listed walls. Ted showed how he created a courtyard of roof gardens over offices to satisfy the planners’ interest in the view from St Ann’s Hill beyond the lake and M25.

The second chapter explained how a metre of soil was put on top of the offices with a trough around the edge with a hedge for sun-shading. The underfloor plenum allowed cooled air to be circulated for night purging of the exposed RMC concrete slab. Ted described how the roof vents for the labs and the kitchens were designed as chess pieces.

Ventilation disguised as chess pieces

In the final chapter Ted explained how the buildings supported recreation as well as workspace - the gardens can be walked across and enjoyed.

The RMC's roof garden was the largest in Europe at the time of completion

             
Catherine then opened up the discussion to the audience, which included many members of the original design team, on why the building should be saved.

Former member of Cullinans, job architect Richard Gooden of 4orm, said that RMC was important for its innovative use of thermal mass and the novel linking of landscape, place and building. It feels that it has always been there.

Miriam Fitzpatrick of Dublin University, who did her Part 3 on RMC explained how the marriage of the landscape and the making of place didn’t seem to be high on the agenda in the 1980s, but everyboby loves a garden.

Greg Penoyre of Penoyre & Prasad suggested RMC’s range of work environments was cleverer than Google’s LA office he had recenly visited because it creates a unique range of places for reflection. As a workplace RMC is special and hard to repeat.

The RMC environmental engineer, Max Fordham, explained the building, being in the greenbelt, had had to meet strict conditions to get planning and those conditions should still apply - making it difficult for anyone else to replace what is there. He explained an advantage of the single-storey office building is its ability to create a natural rooflight down the middle, saving on energy in lighting. RMC has all the attributes of a smart office building but was one of the first not to need air-conditioning. The swimming pool was separated by an air curtain and a heat pump - now very fashionable but at the time, novel.

Ted's drawing from the C20 Society event describing the sustainable environmental elements of the building

Chris Twinn, of Twinn Sustainability Innovation, recalled how he had been working at Arup for five years at the time RMC was completed. He was not involved in the project but saw it as an eye-opener: suddenly you didn’t need air-conditioning. He has was able to draw from those ideas in subsequent projects - Hopkins’ Nottingham Inland Revenue which was to be entirely passively cooled, Portcullis House and BedZED.

Ian Craig, engineer on RMC, thought of RMC as 100 projects in one, describing every detail as great fun and totally original.

Former RIBA President, Sunand Prasad of Penoyre & Prasad, was struck at how the engineers in the room had spoken up. If there is a third industrial revolution based on natural systems, the RMC is an early essay in how we can solve the problems of the future. It has inspired.

The discussion progressed to other possible uses for the building, which included a boutique hotel and an academic workplace, but it is widely seen as a great place to go on working in.

The RMC offices create a formal court for Eastley End House

Fitzwilliam College, Central Building Phase 1 Opening Ceremony

On Monday 13th May I attended the official opening of Phases 1 and 1A of the refurbishment to the central building at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge.

The team

This forms the first part of a five year staged renovation project to upgrade the function and fabric of the building, designed by Denys Lasdun in 1959, to provide more opportunities for student use, conferences and events. This went hand in hand with upgrading the services and environmental performance to reduce energy consumption and improve the internal conditions. We completed the feasibility study to suggest the packages of work in early 2013.

Enjoying a drink with the Bursar, Andrew Powell and engineers Adrian Mudge and Phil Hutchins

Phase 1 began on site in July 2013 and Phase 1A In the New Year 2014.

Phase 1 involved the building of a new extension to the north corner of the central building. This provides two new offices to the ground floor and a new servery to the first, linked by a new stair and service lift from the kitchen. This opens up the opportunity, (to be completed as part of a later phase), for a new circulation route around the Hall at first floor. This will unlock many of the major rooms on this level, some of which currently can only be accessed by passing through an adjacent room.

Phase 1A renovated the Old Library adjacent to the servery. This room had become available following the construction of the new Olisa Library in the College grounds, completed by Cullinan Studio in 2009.

The brief was to provide a sub-dividable suite of rooms that could be used for dining conferences, lectures, large meetings and events such as Wedding receptions for up to 160 people.

Because the room is over 30m long we sought to break its scale down by removing the relatively low original tile grid ceiling. We then created curved coffers aligned to the eight large windows, with lower sections of ceiling where down stand beams dictated the level. The lower sections house radiant ceiling panels, acoustic render and spot and track lighting to illuminate the College’s collection of paintings, mounted on the walls to great effect. The curved coffers are fitted with adjustable mood lighting for evening events.

We also upgraded the roof with insulation where there had been none and replaced the roof lights with new opening types. The existing sash windows were renovated to incorporate double glazing and air seals, which in combination with the roof lights provide a naturally ventilated approach to cooling the space.

The Master of the College, Nicola Padfield ceremonially “gunned in” the commemorative slate plaque to a rousing round of applause from the team; Fitzwilliam College, (Client), Cullinan Studio (Architect), SEH French (Main Contractor), Roger Parker Associates (M&E engineer) and Peter Dann ltd (Structural Engineer).

Clever Energy: People Power

In May we hosted a talk - 'Clever Energy: People Power' - as part of Open-City's Green Sky Thinking Week 2014 - and filmed it too...

'Clever Energy: People Power' video

Speakers: Mark Hewitt of ICAX on inter-seasonal heat transfer, Rokiah Yaman of LEAP on developing micro-anaerobic digestion in central London, and Agamemnon Otero of Repowering London on creating community-owned local energy.