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Trash or treasure?A small Belgian design collective is tackling the trend of tearing down buildings before their time, through the large-scale salvage and sale of materials and components. Stephen Cousins reports

ICR

CRI | Vol 7 | Issue 2 | June 2016

Technique

20 CRI | Vol 7 | Issue 2 | June 2016

Technique Recycling

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Seeing the big mismatch between what was being demolished and what dealers were looking for, we made the decision to try to bridge the gap and start a company Maarten Gielen, Rotor Deconstruction

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Rotor’s biggest salvage operation so far was a 95,000 sq m bank, built in 1970 in Brussels, where 230 tons of materials were recovered, including false ceilings

Rotor recovered hundreds of intricately-patterned polychromatic ceramic floor tiles, dating from 1936, from a complex of modernist former university buildings in Val-Benoît in Liege

When Belgium-based design and research collective Rotor noticed a growing trend for bulldozing post-war buildings in the region, including many offices and public service buildings, it resolved to take action and develop a more sustainable approach to demolition based on the concept of materials salvage and reuse.

The studio set up a spin-off business, Rotor Deconstruction, which employs a team of skilled craftsmen who infiltrate modern and contemporary buildings before the wrecking balls arrive and carefully strip out any valuable building materials, components and historic items. The materials are repaired, cleaned and made ready for reuse in other buildings, or sold at auction and on the firm’s online shop.

The logic of the process is simple: salvaging goods cuts the volume of demolition waste going to landfill and makes the new buildings less resource hungry. It generates money from what would otherwise be treated as waste and, from a cultural perspective, diverting antique or iconic design items from the tip is a form of historic building preservation.

The business is less than two years old but has already completed salvage work on around 40 properties, mostly in Belgium, plus a few in France and the Netherlands. These have ranged from a small shop where just a few light fittings were salvaged, to its most ambitious so far, a 95,000 sq m bank built in 1970 in Brussels, where 230 tons of materials were recovered, including false ceilings, granite tiles and over 100 doors.

Plans are now in place to ramp up the scale of the operation and establish a new division in Paris to exploit a stream of public buildings slated for demolition or refurbishment.

Too many post-war buildings are being knocked down without consideration of their latent value, says Maarten Gielen, founding member and designer at Rotor.

“In Brussels, the postmodern KBC bank headquarters, completed in 1998 is already scheduled to be knocked down,” he told CRI. “Although it is not a particularly interesting sample of corporate architecture, at just 18 years old it is far too young to be bulldozed. At the very least, demolishing responsibly is more appropriate, and salvaging components is, in many cases for us, the last opportunity to preserve them.”

Specialist teamRotor has had an interest in material flows in construction since its inception, in 2005, expressed in architectural projects, exhibitions, writings and conferences. However, attempts to source reclaimed materials for building projects always proved tricky. Second-hand products listed on websites like Craigslist had no warranty, there was no service for cutting to measure, and often by the time a client agreed to use the product, it had gone or the offer had expired.

In 2012, the collective carried out a survey of the circa 100 dealers in second hand building materials in Belgium. This revealed that the majority focused on selling rustic antique materials to the domestic market and almost none sold materials extracted from large buildings, which are responsible for the bulk of demolition waste.

Gielen comments: “Seeing the big mismatch between what was being demolished, the offer in terms of materials, and what dealers were looking for, we made the decision to try to bridge the gap and start a company that focusses on salvage from large scale, modern and contemporary buildings slated for renovation and demolition.”

Rotor Deconstruction employs a team of 10 permanent technicians skilled in dismantling, conditioning, transporting and cleaning a large variety of building materials. Many have backgrounds in cinema and theatre, where they learned the process of dismantling and re-erecting structures, item numbering and making sketches on site.

When mounting a salvage operation, they typically collaborate with external partners, including demolition contractors, site managers, architects, and craft trades.

Most materials are obtained from buildings owned by large real estate companies in the region that have agreed to allow the firm to intervene in prospective renovation or demolition works.

It is not hard to convince them of the benefits of salvage, over traditional demolition, says Geilen. Rotor charges a sum per ton of goods extracted that is “relatively small” compared to conventional waste removal. Salvage gives companies corporate social responsibility brownie points, and helps them comply with environmental assessments required by law.

Rotor has a framework agreement with major real estate firm Cofinimmo to partially recycle and reclaim materials from its renovation projects. Under this agreement 16 tons of materials were recovered before demolition in 2015, and Rotor will be involved in at least four renovation projects this year. Cofinimmo’s environmental manager, Hanna De Groote, told CRI: “Aware of the scarcity of certain raw materials, our company thinks about the life cycle of the buildings in the portfolio and how to apply the principles of the circular economy more effectively.”

Although Belgium scores well in terms of classical recycling, the process is still energy-intensive and generally downgrades components’ residual value. When double glazing is crushed to make drainage sand on a golf course, or a natural stone floor is pulverised to make underlay for a road, little of the energy embodied in their fabrication, sometimes called ‘grey energy’, is conserved.

Rotor’s Maarten Gielen says it is “absurd” that European building regulations ignore the grey energy issue. “Most legislators in Europe have set very ambitious mandatory insulation values but they neglect the fact that grey energy accounts for the bulk of energy that will ever be consumed in a particular building. Reusing materials preserves a fair portion of that.”

Rotor Deconstruction

Olivier Beart

storage by finding a new application for them straight from the deconstruction site, we reduce our costs and increase the quantity of materials considered reusable,” Gielen says.

Beauty, or bulk?Antique and iconic design items currently comprise less than one per cent of the volume of products salvaged, but generate up to 10% of the firm’s revenue.

Recent site investigations for a planned project in Antwerp, the former HQ of a tobacco importer, revealed that the only items of high value were a set of tobacco leaf-shaped bronze door knobs. These are expected to fetch around EUR1,000 per pair via an antiques dealer, making the project worthwhile, even through all other salvaged materials will be break even at best.

However, the firm’s experience, in 2014, working at a large scale on the BNP Paribas-Fortis bank project triggered a change in direction and the firm now plans to focus on large big, modern buildings where a reliable stream of more generic, high-value building materials can be found. Office buildings are of particular interest because the renewal rate in Belgium is high and at the end of the majority of leases, buildings are essentially gutted and the interiors removed.

“Sometimes that happens after just five to ten years and everything inside is practically brand new,” says Gielen. “We want to professionalise

Technique | Trash or treasure?

ICR

CRI | Vol 7 | Issue 2 | June 201622

Technique Recycling

CRI | Vol 7 | Issue 2 | June 2016 23

We want to professionalise the practice of reusing building components and focus on materials that represent little risk Maarten Gielen

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Great stuffAs well as working with Cofinimmo, Rotor sells to specialised dealers in second hand materials, private individuals, architects, designers, and SME contractors. Occasionally a few items end up in auction houses or on the antique market, the rest are sold via the webstore at rotordc.com. A look through the firm’s back catalogue reveals a cornucopia of interesting finds:

120 metres of exquisite black ‘Noir de Mazy’ marble plinths painstakingly extracted from a 1970s office building in the Ixelles municipality in Brussels. The same Belgian marble was used in the Empire State Building and Versailles Palace.

Hundreds of intricately-patterned polychromatic ceramic floor tiles, dating from 1936, removed from a complex of modernist former university buildings in Val-Benoît in Liege. Enough of these tiles to cover 25 sq m was sold to a local cultural centre for use as a wall decoration.

Among the many thousands of items extracted from the BNP Paribas-Fortis bank headquarters, built in two phases, in 1960 and 1970, by Generale Bank, were a myriad of architectural decorations, including decorative ceiling systems, by renowned Belgian designers Jules Wabbes and Christophe Gevers.

Prominent Belgian interior designer and property developer Frederic Nicolay told CRI: “I’ve always used salvaged materials in my bars and restaurants. What changed since I started working with Rotor Deconstruction is that I don’t have to go out in yards looking for interesting things myself. I can order what I need, I know the stuff will be in working order, and I know precisely where it comes from.”

Making it payAlthough the idea of salvage sounds simple, sometimes months of work are required to prepare a material for sale. For example, timber boards in parquet floors were often laid in irregular thicknesses, then sanded flat in situ. Salvaging, then reinstalling, them in a new building would create a rough surface, but resanding the surface flat would remove the aged patina that most clients are looking for. So Rotor sends the boards to a small timber company where they are recut and sanded on the rear surface to create a consistent product ready for installation with a regular thickness and authentic patina.

Product development time is critical for the viability of a Rotor Deconstruction job. Where most salvage firms in Belgium will do a deal with a demolition contractor on a project-by-project basis,

Rotor’s business model rests on maintaining a steady flow of salvaged goods. It wants contracts with real estate clients who will renew a percentage of their portfolio annually. That means Rotor can rent a warehouse, put in place a team and, says Gielen, “then the economy of the whole thing starts to make sense.”

Knowing it has buildings to salvage, Rotor can prepare inventories of all the items in them and search for customers. In an ideal scenario, materials will have found a destination before demounting work begins, to save on transport and storage costs, and to avoid overstock. “If we can skip transport and

Emptying the bank: Rotor’s biggest job yetWhen major multi-national bank BNP Paribas-Fortis announced plans to demolish its Brussels headquarters, a 95,000-sq-m group of buildings constructed in 1960 and 1970, Rotor Deconstruction was drafted in to mount its largest salvage operation to date.

The complexity and scale of the extraction operation, carried out over four months during 2014-2015, made it one of the most ambitious in Belgium in recent decades. Rotor’s work focused on the more recent 35,000sq m building, opened in 1973 by original owner Generale Bank and designed by renowned Belgian architect Jules Wabbes (1919-1974). It was Wabbes’ last major work and notable for the plush corporate interiors and use of high quality materials.

Aware of the cultural impact of demolition – only vaults in the basement would be preserved – the bank commissioned Rotor, through a non-profit building conservation organisation, to find relevant uses for interior materials. Rotor initially worked with the bank to define a list of candidate materials for reuse, then all the interiors were inventoried and documented in detail before disassembly.

Multiple technical constraints demanded a high degree of coordination with demolition company, De Meuter. The building contained asbestos in different applications, operating loads were limited due to the risk of soil settlement,

With office-building leases changing hands so frequently, fixtures and fittings are often nearly new


Rotor employs a team of 10 permanent technicians skilled in dismantling, conditioning, and labelling components


yet large elements had to be extracted from a basement.

More than 230 tons of building materials were disassembled, packaged, prepared and stored by Rotor, including 2,500 sq m of false ceilings of various kinds, 66 tons of granite facing, 138 doors and a host of other components, finishes and items of furniture. The main phase of dismantling took place over a two-month period when, on average, fifteen salvage workers were active on site.

BNP Paribas-Fortis required that a number of finishes and more iconic pieces were stored ready to be incorporated into its new headquarters building, constructed on the same site, including the interior decor of the cafeteria, designed by celebrated post-war designer Christophe Gevers.

Priority was then given to public projects and museums, able to cover the cost of dismantling. A gold-plated metal ceiling was installed in a new town library in Woluwe-Saint-Pierre, the Netherlands, several components were installed in the cultural centre of Bomel in Namur, in Belgium, and some furniture samples were delivered to Ghent Design Museum. Other items were installed in various bars and shops in Brussels, including the Quai aux Briques.

Lastly, Rotor gave private buyers the opportunity to purchase pieces via its website and at auction.

the practice of reusing building components and focus on materials that represent little risk - any hardware, partition walls, doors, bathroom fittings, kitchens, certain types of roof tiles, natural stone, lighting fixtures, bricks, lumber, and more.”

Where nextHaving demonstrated proof of concept in Belgium, Rotor has revealed plans to open a second office in Paris where it will team up with real estate developers and public bodies to organise large salvage operations on buildings due to be demolished or renovated.

The firm has previously completed projects in the area but needs to fine tune its model to apply it abroad. Gielen admits: “In Paris there are a lot of public projects that want to be exemplary in terms of sustainability, but we are likely to be confronted with more questions related to public tendering because local municipalities still need to get onboard with ideas around the circular economy and our way of dealing with demolition.”

Others have suggested that the firm targets cities outside of Europe, places like Detroit, in the US, where a huge amount of demolition is underway. While Rotor does not rule this out, access to a steady flow of deconstruction sites and materials must always be matched by an active real estate market where clients are searching for reclaimed materials, which is not the case in Detroit.

Given that construction and demolition are, in volume terms, among the biggest sources of all waste generated on the planet there is plenty of resource out there, it’s just a matter of finding the architects, designers and contractors willing to tap its potential.

36 | SEPTEMBER 2016 | CONSTRUCTION MANAGER

Technical Refurbishment/building envelope

THE WORLD’SMOST COMPLEX ROOFING PROJECTWhen the glass roof of one of Britain’s most iconic postwar buildings had to be replaced, the solution was to wrap it in a high-performance skin designed to meet the needs of regulations and heritage bodies. Stephen Cousins reports

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CONSTRUCTION MANAGER | SEPTEMBER 2016 | 37


THE WORLD’SMOST COMPLEX ROOFING PROJECT

AMONG THE MANY experiments and devices that fill workshops at the University of Leicester Engineering Building, one in particular draws the eye. Suspended in mid-air are a series of open-topped plastic containers connected to thin copper pipes that snake off towards the perimeter.

These strange contraptions were developed, by the Department of Engineering, as an ingenious solution to a longstanding problem with the 1960s-constructed building – a badly leaking roof. Water drips down from broken and damaged panes in the vast glazed roof above into the containers, then trickles along the pipes into permanent internal drains, keeping students and their work nice and dry.

This is no ordinary leaking roof, it is the iconic sculptural saw-tooth glass roof that covers the Grade II*-listed building, designed by renowned British architects James Stirling and James Gowan.

Plagued by problems since completion in 1963, the structure is now the subject of an ambitious £19.5m refurbishment project that will see all 2,500 glass panels on the roof and the glass facade of the laboratory block replaced with the intention of extending the building’s use for another 50 years.

The project must be a contender for the most technically challenging roofing job ever attempted and has pushed the construction team, led by construction manager Lendlease, lead consultant and facade engineer Arup and Austrian roofing/facade specialist Fill Metallbau to the limit of their abilities.

It involves stripping back the original roof to expose its triangular trussed steel frame, then wrapping it in a weathertight glass and aluminium skin – a visual simulacrum of Stirling and Gowan’s original, but compliant to contemporary thermal performance, longevity, safety and access standards.

Every double-glazed panel in the prefabricated system had to be unique, to enable the skin to mould around subtle curves and twists in the steel frame, which had moved and warped over time.

The tight tolerances required during installation led to the development of bespoke parametric modelling software that “exceeds what is currently possible in BIM”. To complicate things further, all the refurbishment work, including disassembly of the original structure, is being completed

“The idea of removing the old roof and installing a new one, with the same shape and using similar materials, might sound simple but in reality it is incredibly difficult”Peter Bale MCIOB, University of Leicester

while the faculty is fully operational, with students working directly below.

Peter Bale MCIOB, project manager at the University of Leicester’s Estates and Facilities Management Division, told CM: “The idea of removing the old roof and installing a new one, with the same shape and using similar materials, might sound simple, but in reality it is immensely difficult. Essentially we are following the same path as Stirling and Gowan, but also taking into account movement in an older structure, much stricter performance and safety standards, all under the scrutiny of the Local Authority Conservation Office, Historic England and the Twentieth Century Society.”

Landmark buildingArchitects travel across the world to see the Engineering Building, which stands on the edge of the University campus flanking 8.9ha of open green space in Victoria Park. The first example of postmodern architecture in the UK, it has appeared on postage stamps and artworks and effectively launched Sir James Stirling’s stellar career.

Main picture: The iconic saw-tooth roof, built in 1963, incorporates 2,500 panes of glass

Above: Tensioned netting enabled operatives to remove the old glazingIM

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Technical Refurbishment

The factory-like construction was a declaration of war against the predominant trend for dour functionalism. Critics were wowed by the dramatic 12-storey tower with two auditoriums cantilevered from its side – the tallest in the north at the time – and the bulging rooftop with its rows of diamond-shaped skylights, set at a 45-degree angle to allow north light into workshops and research laboratories.

But the geometrical ingenuity of the design was far ahead of its technical performance and from day one the building was plagued by problems stemming from the basic palette of low-cost materials and technologies employed. The roof was fabricated using a flimsy and lightweight stick system of aluminium sections, transoms and mullions – all hand crafted, and cut and installed by hand.

The glazing comprised just two thin sheets of float glass, separated by a fibreglass matt. Much like a greenhouse, it caused intolerable extremes of hot and cold in summer and winter. The thin glass and lack of safe access made it too risky to send anyone up to carry out repairs, hence the ad hoc system of containers and pipes.

Stuart Savage, senior construction manager at Lendlease, comments: “It is questionable how the original system lasted as long as it did – the aluminium was screwed into rotting blocks of wood cast into the concrete frame. The building leaked in 1963 and has leaked ever since.”

The refurbishment is being part-funded by the University of Leicester, with a loan from the European Investment Bank, and

The new system is similar to the stick system used in 1963, and comprises an off-site manufactured subframe of anodised aluminium, plus individually installed mullions, transoms and insulated double-glazed panels. The intricate structure will include 84 new “diamond ends” – geometrically complex frames at the end of each truss with glass intersecting at various angles.

High-tech heritage Designing a system to meet the needs of a Grade II* listing while achieving 21st century levels of performance required a balancing act of historic proportions.

Thomas Pearson, senior designer and conservationist at Arup, told CM: “The changes we are making had to be legible but seem entirely natural. The new glazing has to look ‘right’, but establishing what that means has taken a long time. There have been many important factors to consider, such as the appearance of the translucent glass, but the finesse of the aluminium framing has always been our top priority.”

The new A-rated double-glazed units, manufactured by Okalux, replicate the grey tint and interlayer of fibreglass matting used in the originals, but increased in thickness, from around 9mm to just under 30mm – doubling the weight of glass on the building.

The glass and its support structure are robust enough to resist a person falling onto it from above without collapsing or shattering into shards, and to counter the negative pressure of wind trying to suck the glass out, something the previous roof, with its leaks and cracks, had avoided. As a result, the aluminium glazing bars are 38mm wide, 6mm wider than the originals, but well below the equivalent

Above: An anodised aluminium subframe was manufactured off-site, with mullions, transoms and panels installed individually

delivered under a construction management contract. The form of contract is the first ever implemented by the client, which Peter Bale admits “could have been an absolute nightmare” were it not for the “passion and dedication” of everyone involved.

A special “project charter” was drawn up by the University and signed by Lendlease, the trade contractors and other stakeholders, to commit them to work in partnership to maintain the historic status of the building.

The project team explored options for refurbishment, but a drive to remain faithful to the original informed the decision to retain the truss structure and cover it with a contemporary, precision-engineered system. “A preferable heritage option might have been to simply replace the original glazing, like for like, but there was no way of safely installing or maintaining it and no contractor would have built it due to the risk of litigation,” says Peter Bale.

“There have been many factors to consider… but the finesse of the aluminium framing has always been our top priority”Thomas Pearson, Arup

Stirling and Gowan’s intricate “diamond ends” require glass panes to intersect at complex angles

Diamonds provide a glazing challenge

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standard facade solution of around 50mm wide, says Peter Bale.

Efforts to refine the design bordered on the obsessive. Discussions over what was visible behind the line of the pressure plates on the glazing took almost two months to resolve, says Mark Brennan, senior design manager at Lendlease: “We managed to get the width of the gasket down to 10mm and could not go any lower because it is holding the whole thing together and we had to be able to deliver a warranty to the University.”

Apart from heritage requirements, the building imposed physical limits on how much the new roof could expand in size. For example, the base of the diamond ends had to align with permanent cast-in concrete gutters along the top of the brick walls to allow rainwater to run off.

Every component of the structure had to be assessed and passed by the client

The roof of the scaffold over the workshop is supported on towers that plunge through the trusses below onto the workshop floor. Large amounts of kentledge ballast weights were inserted around the base of the scaffold to hold it in place. The complex scaffolding structure took a lengthy eight months to assemble.

All about the linesInstalling a precision-engineered roof with many complex intersections on top of a 1960s-built structure with multiple large deviations and misalignments has been a huge challenge for Fill Metallbau.

Historic England insisted that the original lines of geometry flow into one another across the entire skin. Taking into account any expansion in the aluminium and settlement in the trusses during deconstruction and installation, installers are working to tolerances of +/-2mm.

Numerous point cloud surveys were carried out to map the trusses and develop a detailed three-dimensional model. The complexity of the challenge prompted Fill Metallbau to develop a new form of 3D parametric modelling software to monitor the installation procedure and identify any issues in real time.

Individual panels are temporarily fixed in position, then sample co-ordinates are recorded by on-site operatives and relayed to Austria. The figures are then run through the software to assess the impact on the overall system and ensure that cumulative errors are not adding up and sending those all-important lines of geometry out of kilter.

As work progresses, more than 50% of the new roof is complete and the first diamond ends are currently being installed. The level of complexity has resulted in a few teething problems, and the expected completion date has been extended to March 2017 from the end of this year.

and the heritage stakeholders before installation. The star rating on the Grade II* listing required that certain fixtures and fittings were renewed or refurbished to maintain their original appearance. Bespoke heritage replicas of several air-handling units in the facade were produced at a cost of £27,000, as part of the new mechanical ventilation strategy.

The new roof is designed to trap warm air in winter, but heritage experts rejected a plan to integrate automated windows to naturally ventilate the workshops in summer because the openings would be visible from the tower. Instead, the air-handling units and new chillers installed under the roof will cool the spaces.

Two full-scale mock-ups of the diamond ends were produced, an initial visual mock-up and a test rig, built in Austria by Fill Metallbau to industry standards, to demonstrate to the heritage stakeholders that the lines of geometry and the structural system would function effectively.

A spokesperson for Historic England told CM: “The challenge has been to preserve the architectural significance of the original design while sustaining the building in its original use by improving technical performance and longevity. The achievement we hope will be a faithful recreation of the different geometric forms and aluminium profile with a new bespoke patent glazing system.”

Ready for lift-offThe refurbishment works are being carried out under a giant white tent of fabric-wrapped scaffolding, designed by Lyndon Scaffolding, to weatherproof the building and allow the workshops and laboratories to remain occupied. A layer of tensioned walk-on netting under the roof line, with protective matting below, has enabled operatives to remove the old glazing and install new glass without dust or screws dropping on students or staff beneath.

Every component of the roof, including glass and screws, had to be removed without damage then stored, ready for reinstallation should the new structure fail.

“The challenge of having a kite the size of a football field hovering over the building is not only holding it up, but holding it down,” says Peter Bale. “The scaffolding is designed to resist large uplift forces created if wind gets underneath.”

Below: The new glazing has to meet heritage and performance standards

Bottom: Work is carried out under a white tent of fabric-wrapped scaffolding

“We managed to get the width of the gasket down to 10mm and could not go any lower because it is holding the whole thing together”Mark Brennan, Lendlease

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Given the hefty £19.5m price tag, some have questioned whether re-roofing a technologically challenging building is worth the effort, when the same budget could buy a brand new building with the same floor area, plus state-of-the art equipment.

But that argument misses the point, says Peter Bale: “The University is committed to the long-term preservation and conservation of this building, and rightly so. At end of the day, it is not just our building it is everybody’s.”

And what about Stirling and Gowan, what would they make of the herculean efforts to recreate their design?

“I imagine them smiling wryly about the whole thing,” says Arup’s Thomas Pearson. “Some of the conservation discussions might have appealed, particularly to Gowan’s surrealist side: this is a building which resists conventional heritage thinking. But ultimately I see our project as quite a light-touch change to the architecture, and I don’t think they would have minded that at all.” CM

Client University of LeicesterContractor LendleaseTrade contractors Facade/glazing: Fill MetallbauM&E: P R MorsonScaffolding: Lyndon ScaffoldingDeconstruction: ArmacMetalwork: BMBTensioned nets: Safety Net ServicesLogistics: ClipfineGroundworks: BarnesmoreBuilders’ work: GrimesVertical distribution: A-Plant

Temporary supplies: WingateWaste management: Advance WasteSite accommodation: KonstructaSecurity: ServestSurveys: Arc EnvironmentalHoarding/site setup: DarfenConcrete repairs: Prestek UKBMU supplier: RostekLiquid membrane/gutter lining: Classic Roofing MaintenanceDecorating: Johns of NottinghamCommissioning and H&S file compilation: Valco Services

Consultant teamProject management: Pulse AssociatesConservation, façade, M&E, structural engineer and principal design services: ArupCost consultancy and project H&S services: GleedsStructural engineering services: CundallArchitectural conservation services Pick EverardHeritage stakeholdersLeicester City CouncilHistoric England20th Century SocietyLength of contract 79 weeksContract sum Undisclosed

Above: The project involved the construction of 84 geometrically complex“diamond ends”

Below: Operatives worked on the site while students continued to use the library


10 Insulation

Products In Practice March/April 2016

When BBM Sustainable Design was contract-ed, in 2008, to develop a sustainable master plan for a country estate in East Sussex, south of Tunbridge Wells, the high spec, high ener-gy brief would have had many environmental-ly-minded practices running for the hills.

New House called for a £1.8 million new country house, conversion of a derelict 1940s dairy into a heated swimming pool, and the retrofit of a 19th century oast house, all set in 110ha of Wealden countryside.

The pool house, with its sauna and steam room, was predicted to sap around 80% of the total power load, and the requirement for all the windows in the house to remain closed in sum-mer to prevent insects from entering meant a heavy reliance on mechanical ventilation.

This was a very different proposal to the Waste House, BBM’s award-winning re-search building for the University of Brighton,

New House,Hadlow Down When Waste House designer BBM was asked to deliver a large and energy-hungry country pile, the result was high spec and sustainable, with a visible twistWords: Stephen Cousins Photographs: Leigh Simpson

constructed entirely of rubbish including old toothbrushes and floppy discs, for just £100,000.

BBM director Duncan Baker-Brown com-ments: ‘Some people might say, if you want to be sustainable why didn’t you just tell the cli-ent he couldn’t have a heated swimming pool, but then he would have gone to another archi-tect that might not have been so preoccupied with trying to save energy. The fact is, archi-tects also have to work with super-rich clients because they have carbon footprints 25 times the size of everyone else and they need to be ed-ucated and supported if they have inclinations towards being less carbon hungry.’

A combination of low energy strategies was devised to meet the brief with the smallest car-bon footprint possible. Studio Engleback pro-duced an estate-wide sustainable management plan, introducing woodland management and transforming land into wildflower meadows,

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Far Left: View of New House looking south west, showing the north bedroom block projecting above the main entrance lobby.Main image: New House, south elevation. The home is part of the wider modernisation of the whole farm site: oast house, pool house and energy centre.

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13Insulation


and Battle McCarthy produced the energy plan. The house was originally planned as a retro-

fit extension of the 1970 property, but the client was put off by the £350,000 VAT bill associated with refurbishment, so chose to demolish the building and construct a new build in its place.

‘It is concerning that the industry is de-molishing perfectly good buildings to save the 20% VAT, our laws are skewed to encour-age new build not retrofit and extension,’ says Baker-Brown. To mitigate the impact on sus-tainability, timber from the existing house was salvaged and used in the Waste House project.

The house was conceived as a sculptur-al object in a working rural landscape and its angular and non-symmetrical form responds to the landscape, views and the movement of the sun. The north-facing elevation is dug into a Tonbridge sandstone bank, with the spoil used to create an internal rammed earth wall sepa-rating the entrance hall from a meditation room.

Above that, a three-story Le Corbusier-style ‘light cannon’ casts shafts of sunlight down into the space at certain times of the year. The south-facing elevation is mostly glazed, to

harness solar energy, with deep balconies pro-viding shade in the height of summer.

With a brief to deliver a ‘robust elegance ap-propriate for a large farmhouse’, local materials were specified for all three buildings to create a sense of place and reduce embodied energy. The external walls of the house are construct-ed with load-bearing blockwork, wrapped with 300mm of external insulation made from waste timber-fibre and finished with either lime ren-der or a rainscreen of finger-jointed sweet chest-nut cladding. Chestnut cladding was used on the pool house elevations and its curved ceiling. Internal walls are hand finished in a breathable plaster called ‘tadelakt’, from Morocco.

‘Cladding was sourced from the neighbour-ing woodland. It is untreated and looks bruised and patchy at first but then matures to give a grey, textural appearance,’ says Baker-Brown. Most materials were specified to be self-finish-ing, including polished concrete or reclaimed oak floorboards and internal joinery made from locally sourced oak.

Woodchip harvested from the owner’s 150 acres of woodland fuels a biomass boiler, located

Section

1 254 x 254mm steel beam and plate2 215mm flat laid blockwork3 Lambswool insulation4 Compressed timber fibre insulation batts5 Breather membrane6 Sweet chestnut hit miss cladding on chestnut battens7 Zinc verge coping8 50mm ventilation gap9 100 x 25mm treated SW gapped roof boarding10 Zinc sheet finish with standing seam

11 Pro Clima vapour barrier12 12.5mm plasterboard on Gypframe studs13 Lime finish to internal face14 Entrance hall15 Snug16 Kitchen/dining17 Terrace18 Meditation room19 Living20 Study21 Master bedroom and ensuite22 Bedroom block

in a separate energy centre, which provides hot water and heating for the pool house and the two residential properties.

Both pool and country house have photovol-taic and solar panels on the roof. A large section of pitched roof on the house is twisted to face due south to maximise solar PV exposure. The scheme’s total annual energy use from renew-able sources is 35.2kWh/m2 resulting in a CO2 emissions reduction of 8.97kgCO2/m2.

A mixed-mode ventilation strategy was ini-tially planned for the house, combining a regu-lar sized MVHR system with the ability to open windows to provide cross-ventilation and pre-vent overheating. However, at a late stage of de-sign the client asked instead that the windows remain closed year-round to keep out flying in-sects attracted to the farm’s pond. He also want-ed to be able to smoke inside the property with-out the smell of stale smoke in the air.

‘This seemingly simple request resulted in a difference in spec and a real head scratcher for Battle McCarthy,’ says Baker-Brown. ‘Suddenly the M&E budget rose substantially: we had to source an industrial-scale MVHR system but the

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Main house: longitudinal section looking southwest

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14 Insulation


engineer managed to avoid increasing the roof height, which would have been a planning issue.’

During summer, the temperature of the internal spaces is controlled using the MVHR with supplementary passive cooling provided by the adjacent pond, which is always cooler than even the hottest day of the year. Air sup-ply to the building and oast house is pre-cooled to a constant 15°C using a passive earth tube system that draws in air from woodland to the north and cools it as it travels through under-ground pipes. During winter, the same system primes the air to 15°C, reducing the amount of heating required from the biomass boiler.

The house is a slow response building, grad-ually absorbing heat from the sun, underfloor heating and occupants in its heavyweight blockwork walls and concrete floors, then ra-diating it out at night. The MVHR circulates and

recovers heat from around the building.‘The effectiveness of the system depends

on wrapping the building in an airtight over-coat of insulation, to isolate it from the external climate,’ says Baker-Brown. ‘Buildings that ex-ploit thermal mass normally depend on high oc-cupancy, drawing heat from people inside, but here we rely more on heat from the sun, through windows in the south elevation, so it works more on a seasonal basis than daily.’

The development was designed to achieve Code for Sustainable Homes Level 5, but strug-gled to achieve it due to the large amount of south-facing glazing. However, by taking into account issues of building orientation and pas-sive climate response, such as the use of ther-mal mass, and demonstrating that overall an-nual CO2 emissions would be just 2.53kgCO2/m2, Battle McCarthy was able to show that it

effectively surpassed Level 5 requirements and planning approval was awarded.

But questions remain over how it will per-form in use. Issues related to the over-complica-tion of the MVHR system, including problems with its software and sensors, mean it has still to be signed off, potentially resulting in high-er energy consumption. ‘This is a small job for the system supplier so it has been difficult get-ting it back on site to adjust the programming. It will be interesting to see how the building performs in use,’ says Baker-Brown.

That setback aside, BBM Sustainable Design has shown how a 21st century country house can be developed as low carbon, to a high spec, with-out having to resort to using DVD cases and two tonnes of denim offcuts for insulation. As Baker-Brown puts it: ‘Give us any building typology and we can do the greenest version of it.’ •

Below left: View of the upper living area looking south west.

Bottom left: There’s some bold detailing evident internally with a central staircase of black concrete and frosted green glass.

Below right: The pool house was clad in locally sourced chestnut with Moroccan ‘tadelakt’ plaster inside.

Bottom right: The pool house might look understated but with a sauna and steam room, it uses 80% of the site’s energy demand.

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