Back     Latest news from Green Building Press    Subscribe to our newsletter

National Trust Office Wins Sustainability Award

Posted: 29/09/2006

Heelis, the Central Office for The National Trust in Swindon by Feilden Clegg Bradley Architects has won the RIBA Sustainability Award. Won in a design competition, Heelis is a model low-energy office building on a brownfield site. This striking building has a generous front-of-house space that provides a welcoming reception, a shop and a café that is open to the public.

The collaboration of the architect, the client and environmental engineers has produced an excellent example of sustainable architecture. The two-storey deep open-plan office is naturally ventilated with a myriad of ventilation chimneys, and is daylit. The performance of the banks of solar panels on the roof is displayed in the entrance hall and the staff’s cars are restricted to car-sharers.

The RIBA Sustainability Award sponsored by English Partnerships is given to the building that demonstrates most elegantly and durably the principles of sustainable architecture. The shortlist was drawn from the RIBA Award-winning buildings announced earlier this year in June.

The judges of this special award were pleased to be able to award the prize to a ‘mainstream’ building type, thus sending out signals that sustainability can and should be claimed by the centre ground, and not just be seen as the domain of the one-off maverick experiment.

In many ways this is the most straightforward of the four schemes shortlisted for the RIBA Sustainability Award, but it is also the project with the most transferable lessons. It is primarily the most basic of building types – a developer-built office block (The National Trust then leases the building.) That it can then raise the sustainable stakes as high as it does is the real achievement. It is built by a developer at standard Class A costs, with the additional costs for the sustainable elements only allowed where they fitted into a ten-year payback.

The sustainable design is quite simple but well delivered; a well handled natural ventilation system with a degree of user control, super insulation, PV’s, lots of daylight, sensor controlled lighting. There is something very direct about the strategy that makes it understandable to the occupants and general public, which means that important lessons can be passed on. The building was described to the judges as a cardigan building – you learn to adapt to its cycles by putting on and taking off layers – and this was seen as positive by both client and by the judges.

However, most importantly, the strategy delivers an exceptionally pleasant working environment. It somehow feels healthy without being worthy. The use of daylight, the disposition of courtyards and atria, and the placing of windows are all brilliantly judged to give a sense of an awareness of the outside and openness, whilst at the same time not feeling exposed. For such a big building it is also surprisingly intimate, and the disarmingly simple construction never descends to crudeness.

The National Trust has furthered the sustainable ethos of the design through their management practices. Some simple ideas (no individual bins under desks, just central recycling points) some more demanding(no car parking spaces unless you are part of a car share).

The judges of this special award were pleased to be able to award the prize to a ‘mainstream’ building type, thus sending out signals that sustainability can and should be claimed by the centre ground, and not just be seen as the domain of the one-off maverick experiment.

To view the RIBA Awards go to www.architecture.com or www.ajplus.co.uk

Green Building Press  
 

Back     Latest news from Green Building Press    Subscribe to our newsletter

1612