STONEHENGE VISITOR CENTRE BY DENTON CORKER MARSHALL

Located 1.5 miles to the west of the stone circle at Airman’s Corner, just within the World Heritage Site but out of sight of the monument, the new visitor centre is designed with a light touch on the landscape – a low key building sensitive to its environment.

Sited within the rolling landforms of Salisbury Plain, the design consists of a subtle group of simple enclosures resting on a limestone platform, all sheltered by a fine, perforated, undulating canopy. Three pods, finished in different materials, provide the principal accommodation. The largest, clad in sweet chestnut timber, houses the museum displays and service facilities. The second largest, clad in glass, houses the educational base, a stylish café and retail facilities.

Located between these is the third, by far the smallest and clad in zinc, which provides ticketing and guide facilities. Oversailing them all, and resting on 211 irregularly placed sloping columns, is a steel canopy clad on the underside with zinc metal panels and shaped with a complex geometry reflecting the local landforms. Local, recyclable and renewable materials have been used wherever possible.

The material palette includes locally grown sweet chestnut timber cladding and Salisbury limestone. The new building allows Stonehenge to have dedicated facilities on site for education and interpretation for the first time, with museum-quality exhibits that tell the story of the 5,000 year- old monument. From the new centre, visitors can either walk to the monument or take a ten-minute shuttle ride. During the trip the henge emerges slowly over the horizon to the East.

Sustainable Design

The building is sensitively designed to sit lightly in the landscape. Reversibility – the ability to return the site to its current state – was a fundamental design concept. The modern construction, using slender steel columns and lightweight framed walls, and semi-external spaces allow the depth of foundations to be minimised.

Other green features include:

- An open loop ground source heating system that pumps underground water through a unit to extract/inject heat energy. This enables the building to be heated and provides some cooling without the need for fossil fuels.

- Fully insulated cavity walls – the timber pod is constructed of structurally insulated panels (SIPS), which enables efficiencies in construction whilst minimising material waste and ensuring the building is well insulated.

- Mixed mode ventilation – the building will be naturally ventilated whenever external conditions allow, switching to an efficient mechanical ventilation system that enables the heat energy in the exhaust air to be ‘recovered’ and transferred to the supply air, thereby reducing the load on the heating plant and saving energy.

- “Grey water”, including rainwater collected from the roof of the building, will be used for the bulk of water required at the visitor centre, e.g. for flushing toilets. Other water – e.g. for drinking – will be drawn from the aquifer, a local and renewable resource.

- The facilities will use on-site water treatment for sustainability and to avoid intrusive trenching for connections to water and sewer mains.

Location: Stonehenge, UK

Architects: Denton Corker Marshall

Project Associate: Angela Dapper

Structural Engineers: Sinclair Knight Merz

M&E Consultant: Norman Disney Young

Quantity Surveyor: Firmingers

Planning Supervisor: Chris Blandford Associates

Landscape Architects: Chris Blandford Associates

Exhibition Designers: Haley Sharpe Design

Project Managers: Gardiner + Theobald

Steelwork contractor: S H Structures

Main contractor: Vinci Construction

Cost: £ 27M

Year: 2013

Client: English Heritage

Photographs: Peter Cook

DOCKS SCHOOL BY MIKOU DESIGN STUDIO

The Docks school in Saint Ouen is in a strategic urban location, in the middle of an urban complex composed mainly of high-rise office blocks and housing.

The new school is designed to consume zero energy in order to be emblematic of the sustainable development of the Zac des Docks project and to be a strong architectural landmark in its neighborhood.

The project is exemplary by its choice of siting, by the interior comfort provided for the children – particularly in the design of the school playgrounds and gardens – and by the treatment of the areas of photovoltaic panels, which are integrated into the architecture and are visible from the main street, giving the school a strong educational identity.

The building’s siting facilitated south-facing orientation of all the classrooms and playgrounds in order to make the greatest possible use of passive solar energy.

This spatial disposition also made it possible to increase the surface areas on the south required for the photovoltaic panels which were integrated into the architecture of the covered playground areas.

The scheme is in the form of a mass built in stepped tiers on the east, on the main street, which is extended by large canopies and which folds in crosswise strips on the site’s diagonal to face southwards.

These stepped crosswise strips are separated by internal gardens which open wide east-west transparent views into the school while allowing clear identification of the various teaching areas open to the light and to the peace and quiet on sheltered internal patios.

Facing southwards, the school is arranged in a succession of gardens and volumes in brightly-lit terraces which gradually descend to free the view and to let in maximum sunshine.

The primary school, which is arranged in a strip from the ground floor to the second upper floor, connected to its playground by timber-decked walkways which look down onto the primary school garden on the ground floor.

The nursery school, which is arranged in another strip on the first upper floor, connected to its playground by timber-decked walkways which look down onto garden. The cafeteria, which opens both onto the garden on the ground floor and onto the viewpoint on the new road.

Location: Saint-Ouen, France

Architects: Mikou Design Studio

Project Team: Salwa Mikou, Cecile Jalby, Miguel Allen Valença

Structural Engineer: BERIM

Quantity Surveyor: SLETEC

Main Contractor: URBAINE DES TRAVAUX / GROUPE FAYAT

Area: 4820.0 sqm

Year: 2013

Client: City of Saint-Ouen

Photographs: Florian Kleinefenn

LISHUI ZIJING TECHNOLOGY ENTERPRISE PARK BY BDP

Architectural firm BDP said construction work is expected to start in this days on the Lishui Zijing technology enterprise park located south of Nanjing in China. BDP's Shanghai studio submitted schematic design proposals to the Lishui County government in early October 2013.

The scheme forms part of a masterplan, which was also designed by BDP, and the first phase will feature 140,000 square metres of new commercial office space with supporting retail, civic and public realm spaces. BDP said the masterplan was conceived to respect the contours and context of the site and to integrate the existing network of canals and reservoirs into a new layout, which encourages links to the city and creates green corridors and permeability across the development.

The buildings within the masterplan have been designed as a family of elements that share a commonality of material and façade layering. Various feature buildings will act as markers within the scheme and identify entrances, punctuate views, and improve the character of the public realm.

BDP's design team in Shanghai is working with the local design institute in a monitoring role to deliver detail and construction design packages with specific focus on the envelopes and façades for the blocks. Construction will start with two buildings as part of a phased delivery and the first phase is expected to be completed by the end of 2014.

UNIVERSITY OF EXETER FORUM BY WILKINSON EYRE

Working with the natural features of the site, the scheme creates a 'green corridor' to connect the Forum with the wider landscape. Central to the scheme is an undulating timber gridshell roof, which shelters and unifies as series of new student-focused spaces within.

The fluid form contrasts with the orthogonal brick volumes of the existing buildings on this steeply sloping site, and respects key views across the city to Dartmoor. The Forum features an extended and refurbished library, new learning spaces, student services, catering and retail outlets, a landscaped plaza and new university reception. The new Forum at the University of Exeter brings together a variety of learning, service and reception spaces under the shelter of a huge timber gridshell roof.

Sustainability was an important driver in the development of the scheme, which has been designed to meet a series of a challenging environmental targets – including a requirement that the building consume 10% less energy and have 10% lower CO2 emissions than those required by Part L of the Building Regulations.

Passive design

Although the Forum’s orientation was dictated by the location of the existing buildings it connects, the design was developed to take advantage of the prevailing south-westerly winds in its natural ventilation. Envelope design: The envelope is primarily composed of glazing and the timber gridshell. Solar shading is provided to the auditorium glazing and that at the main entrance to the internal street.

Environmental strategies

The main street space of the building is naturally ventilated, and mechanical heating and cooling minimised to other areas where possible. Natural stack ventilation is employed for the seminar block rooms, with assisted mixed-mode ventilation to the exploration labs. Low energy displacement ventilation systems are used in the auditorium and SSC areas.

Renewables on site

Integrating heating and cooling systems for maximum carbon efficiency, they also provide cooling to the auditorium, SSC and retail units. This system provides for 46.6% of the energy demand and accounts for 15.7% reduction in CO2. Two 1,350mm earth tubes are also buried below the street to precool and preheat air. Early reports from the environmental engineers show that these are working far in excess of their expectations, providing a temperature differential of around six degrees.

Water

The building was designed using SUDS principles, with water harvesting, grey water reticulation and new ponds and wetlands created to the south of the campus to assist in water attenuation. Rainwater harvesting provides 75% of the water required for WC flushing, irrigation and water features within the Forum, with 1,954m² of the roof area used for this harvesting. Low water-use fixtures were selected throughout the new project.

Materials

While the sustainability credentials of the timber structure of the new Forum is immediately apparent, many of the ‘hidden’ components of the build have also been selected for their sustainability. All steel and concrete reinforcement is

100% recycled materials, while a minimum of 20% recycled aggregate was assured across all the new, locally sourced concrete. Masonry and concrete from the initial demolition works was re-used as hardcore and for the road sub-base.

Waste/pollution

The team specified a sustainable ‘chain of custody’ clause to minimise energy consumption during the construction stages of the project which ensured that out of an estimated 3,342 tonnes of construction waste, 470 tonnes was reduced, with 20% reused on site. A comprehensive waste management strategy was also developed for the building in use, ensuring that 90% of the 22 tonnes of waste created each year by the Forum building is recycled.

Land use & ecology

On this site, famous for its green, hilly landscape, site-wide biodiversity has been enhanced through the incorporation of bioswales in the landscape as part of the development of the scheme to BREEAM Excellent. Accountability: Proposals for a full post occupancy review of the building are currently with the client for approval.

Location: Exeter, UK

Architect: Wilkinson Eyre Architects

Project Team: Kevin Bai, Florian Ballan, Stafford Critchlow (director, left), Chris Davies, Ben Dawson, Chris Donoghue, Jim Eyre, Paula Friar, Christian Froggatt, Nat Keast, Harsh Lad, Felix Lewis, Leszek Marszalek, Stephen Perrin, Tom Smith, Ivan Subanovic, Simon Vickers, Jan Vogel, Nadine Wagner, Chris Wilkinson, Soo Yau

Structural Engineering: Buro Happold

M&E consultant: Buro Happold

Quantity surveyor Davis Langdon

Civils, fire, acoustic, AV/IT, transport, access, BREEAM and environmental engineering: Buro Happold

Landscape consultant: Hargreaves Associates

Planning consultant: Turley Associates

Signage, wayfinding and branding:Thomas Matthews

Art Consultant: Modus Operandi

Glass Artist: Alexander Beleschenko

Project manager: Davis Langdon

CDM co-ordinator: Davis Langdon

Main contractor: Sir Robert McAlpine

CAD software used Microstation

Value: £48 million

Year: May 2012

Client: University of Exeter