in progress
The refurbishment of Mayville Community Centre is the practice’s highest profile project to date. The building refurbishment focuses on providing more usable space without increasing the building footprint and on reducing the building’s energy consumption with the finished building predicted to consume 94 per cent less energy than previously. Onsite energy generation will be made
possible via 116sq m of photovoltaic panels generating 18kWp of electricity, 3sq m of solar thermal to provide hot water and a ground source heat pump to provide heat to the radiators for space heating. The project takes a holistic approach to the environment incorporating rainwater harvesting, two native wild flower meadow roofs and ecologically sensitive gardens for community food growing projects. CO2 emissions are minimised by excellent levels of insulation, ensuring draught free construction, triple glazed windows and onsite renewables.
grants are available for pioneering energy-saving structures
All junction details are designed to prevent and minimise thermal bridges, the results of which form part of the PassivHaus Planning Package energy calculations. The project was inspired by two
European schemes, which Bere particularly admires; the Frankfurt Riedburg School and the Ludesch Community Centre. “Riedburg School was the kind of pioneering build that we need to see more of in the UK. It was the result of extensive research by the City of Frankfurt into the health and comfort advantages of the PassivHaus approach to the design of a school building,” he says. The combination of heating and cooling
devices impressed Bere; the mix of natural ventilation for cooling and heat recovery ventilation for the winter was an idea he wanted to utilise in his own designs. The Ludesch Community Centre, designed by one of the leading figures in PassivHaus, Herman Kaufmann, had a different outlook in design, but was equally arresting. “It was the first PassivHaus community building I saw and I was taken aback by the quality of the design. The centre had a fresh, pure feeling to the design, one that created a healthy, hygienic and light appearance,” he says.
The hope is that the same will be true for the Mayville project. “We have transformed what was a dark, introverted building to one that now has tall open spaces with a south- facing elevation allowing sunlight to help brighten and heat the interior,” says Bere.
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The project incorporates rainwater harvesting, wild flower meadow roofs and gardens for food growing projects
The way ahead “The scope for PassivHaus in the UK leisure and retail sector is massive,” says Bere, but the sector will need help to get it on track and competing with Europe. Bere warns against the unnecessary
expansion of facilities without first considering the retrofitting model. Financial support is available for both, he says. “One of the crucial aspects to remember when considering a PassivHaus energy-saving build is the substantial financial grant aid available for pioneering energy-saving structures, whether new or refurbished.”
The Mildmay Community Partnership, which runs the centre, received most of the funding on this basis. The centre is the only charity project to be funded by the Low Carbon Building Programme, a fund managed by the Energy Saving trust for the Department of Energy and Climate Change. The project was also awarded the maximum £500,000 from the Big Lottery's Community Building Fund, and received
just over £1m from the Community Builders Fund. The cost of achieving zero carbon
PassivHaus structures will result in immediate carbon savings of between 80 per cent and 90 per cent and financial savings after 10 to 20 years. Morally, it’s a no-brainer, says Bere. “We should not let a short-term, profit-driven economic logic blind us to what we must do to be fair to the planet and its global population.” Developments that embrace principles such as PassivHaus form the ultimate goal for forward-thinking practices such as Bere’s, but in the meantime valuable improvements can be made to leisure sites, particularly those which are restricted in the sustainable measures they can adopt. He refers to museums and art galleries that can often waste a lot of energy on heating. He says these could remove controls triggered by temperature and replace them with controls triggered by humidity. The heating system would then maintain the correct humidity level to look
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