ENVIRONMENT & SUSTAINABILITY
Bringing
architecture to life A
Howard Penstone, Network Rail’s development manager for the Quadrant:MK and Tim Morrison, director of building services at URS, tell RTM about the latest in sustainable architecture.
building that breathes has been designed to adapt to today’s environment and look
to the future. Employees started moving into the Quadrant:MK, Network Rail’s sustainable new national centre on June 11 – and it has been noted as a leading example of intelligent architecture.
Network Rail’s development manager Howard Penstone and Tim Morrison, director of building services at the project’s environmental consultants URS, described what makes the centre stand out, and how it marks a turning point in attitudes towards environmental innovation.
It wasn’t any one special feature that makes the Quadrant:MK different, Morrison said, but the very concept of working with nature.
“Rather than particular components or bits of technology, what sets this apart is the building itself.”
Passive design
He described how passive design techniques were used to reduce energy consumption, keep capital expenditure down and bring
benefi ts through the life cost of the building. The Quadrant: MK has about 25% of the typical offi ce consumption of energy, and around a third of typical water consumption.
Morrison explained: “Passive design is about orientation of the building, optimising how it sits on the site that allows it to harness all the prevailing winds and the direct solar gains,
allows us to
maximise the daylight. We did a lot of high-end analysis to test lots of different ‘what ifs’.”
Working
Above, from left to right: Howard Penstone, Network Rail development manager; Iain Stewart MP; Adrian Thomas, Network Rail head of resourcing; Mark Lancaster MP
together closely to “blend the
engineering and the architecture” allowed the development of an unusual building that
Morrison described almost in terms of a living organism; breathing, thinking and adapting.
Achieving the right balance of glazing and solid materials were “simple moves that make a massive impact on how the building performs,” he said.
These materials allow heat and daylight to be centrally controlled, based on the changing external environment. The site layout offered the opportunity to explore different ways to confi gure the building and optimise performance.
He added: “It’s a very different geometry inside.”
The building is naturally ventilated, with atria space acting as ‘lungs’ to draw air in from outside through an operational façade, which is controlled automatically or by the staff themselves to a precise degree, millimetre by millimetre.
“The building breathes through the atria space. We draw cool summer air in overnight and charge it [the concrete slabs] with ‘cool’ for use the following day. When it’s warmer outside the following day it stays cool inside because we’ve charged that concrete,” Morrison said.
34 | rail technology magazine Jun/Jul 12
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