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).

Demolition or Refurbishment

On Monday evening Prof. Anne Power from LSE gave a thought provoking presentation at the Institute of Civil Engineers. She began by tackling the governments notion of a housing shortage in the UK. We currently have 25million homes (17million 3bed+). Also called into question was the idea that we reuse plastic bags but not a house!

She weighed up the argument for demolition or refurbishment in terms of

1. Economic cost

2. Environmental cost

3. Social Cost

She questioned some of common misconceptions in the refurbishment debate and spoke at length about the green deal.

For an hours watching well spent click on the link below for a recording of the lecture.

https://ice.adobeconnect.com/_a884535394/p36vt59xnyr/?launcher=false&fcsContent=true&pbMode=normal (some compatibility issues for windows 7 users)

Fun with thrift: towards the circular economy

I went with Simon Smith of Ramboll to the EAUC conference this week to listen to what was going on and to promote our ideas for ‘smart refurbishment’. Of course the current economic conditions are forcing us to make do with reuse of existing stock but the growing recognition of the importance of putting embodied carbon into the equation should be driving this in any case. The ‘smart’ bit is getting the balance right between optimum use of space, upgraded fabric and energy.

In the light of this, Ellen Macarthur gave a timely and inspiring closing key note on how she had gone from record-busting sailor to campaigner for a radical transformation of our economy, bringing to that overwhelming challenge the same sense that the impossible can be done. The overarching vision is that we must redesign our economy from a linear ‘take, make, dump’ pattern to a circular one in which resources are used more prudently, intensively and design enables their repeated re-use. If the world’s supplies of mineral resources used in the conventional way are running out at the pace predicted (‘coal will last for 117 years’ etc) this is clearly an imperative.

One aspect of the circular economy is the idea of ‘Industrial Symbiosis’ in which one industry’s waste is another’s resource. The principle underpins the London Sustainable Industries Park in Dagenham where we (with Ramboll, Hoare Lea and Grontmij designed the Institute for Sustainability’s Research Centre for the LTGDC. As in the natural world, symbiosis doesn’t happen overnight and it takes time for a richly complex industrial ecosystem to take root. Good ecological management to speed up germination, nurture seedlings, and link mutually beneficial organisms translates to some pretty challenging marketing and creative approaches to funding to get the industrial ecosystem underway and self-sustaining.

One of the pioneer plants at the LSIP is Closed Loop, the company that recycles plastic bottles to food grade plastic. As a small example of low energy reuse rather resource hungry recycling I must show you my reuse of plastic bottles for replacement mudguards for my Brompton. They have lasted far longer than the originals - the serious mismatch between supply and demand is perhaps a lesson in itself.

There’s an old fashioned word for this which I think we might begin to see more of – thrift. Whether you call it thrift or ‘Project Redesign’ we need more of it and I look forward to sharing ideas.