CIBSE AWARDS WINNER BROCKHOLES
WONDERFUL I
t was a diffi cult brief. Design a visitor centre complete with shop, classroom, exhibition space and conference centre right in the middle of an
ecologically sensitive site in the middle of a fl ood plain. The competition was advertised on the
RIBA website and so I set about forming a team to win the project,’ says Hareth Pochee, an engineer at Max Fordham. He joined forces with Adam Kahn Architects, structural engineers Price and Myers, and quantity surveyor Jackson Coles to come up with a design for a visitor centre for Brockholes Nature Reserve, which is sited close to the River Ribble near Preston. The team’s winning design for the 67
ha wetland site gave each of the centre’s functions its own building. These are
clustered together, village-like, on a 2,400 m2
concrete pontoon that fl oats on one of
the site’s three lakes. As well as giving the centre signifi cant fl ood protection – the area fl oods every 15 years – this innovative solution brings visitors close to the reeds at the water’s edge: ‘The buildings are located where the nature is happening,’ says Pochee. Once they’d won the contract, Pochee
and the team sat down with the client to develop the scheme. ‘It was clear from the outset that environmental performance was top of the client’s agenda,’ explains Pochee. Initially, BREEAM was not a project requirement. However, as the design developed, a revised version of BREEAM was published that included a new
‘Outstanding’ rating for ultra-sustainable developments. According to Pochee, both the design team and client were inspired by this new rating – and, as a result, BREEAM Outstanding became a key aim.
Concrete evidence In addition to this aspiration, Max Fordham decided to conduct an embodied energy analysis of the £6.2m scheme’s construction materials. The investigation was based on the Environment Agency’s database, coupled with the consultant’s own research. ‘The methodology is straightforward, but confi dence in some of the data is frustrating because different sources have different energy values for the same materials, so we had to make a critical assessment based on the
www.cibsejournal.com
September 2012 CIBSE Journal 31
Ioana Marinescu
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