62 The sustainability story
Strong leadership, a clear brief and challenging sustainability targets meant that all stakeholders collaborated to champion sustainability throughout the life of this project. The sustainability story behind Westfield Stratford City is also unique in its own way because of the project’s proximity to the Olympic Park. In 2005, when London won the bid to host the Games, Stratford City project was already underway and had a pretty ambitious set of sustainability targets in place. The key to the task now was to ensure that the two projects could be taken forward on a consistent basis. The fact that Westfield Stratford City serves as the gateway to the Olympic Park for the majority of visitors to the Olympic Park meant that it too would be under the international spotlight during the Games.
Environmental Review Panel
Early in the masterplanning process, Stratford City’s development partners established eight principles that would guide the project’s approach to sustainability: energy, building design, materials, microclimate, waste, water, ecology, and air quality. A strategy was developed for each of these broad areas, identifying opportunities that could be actively pursued. In an unusual move, which could be replicated on other large-scale projects, Newham Council’s outline planning permission was conditional on agreeing a set of site-wide sustainable design strategies for each of these areas before the zonal masterplan was approved. The establishment of an independent panel of experts, the Environmental Review Panel (ERP), which was required as part of the Section 106 agreement with Newham, was critical to this process and provides fascinating insight into what can be accomplished by an environmental watchdog with little actual statutory power, but wide-ranging influence.
1. Aerial view of Westfield Stratford City site and 2. The combined cooling heat and power (CCHP) plant
The remit of the Stratford ERP was to provide in-depth environmental expertise and scrutiny for the project. In this regard, the Commission for a Sustainable London 2012 provides an interesting point of comparison. Its role as an environmental watchdog with little statutory power was similar, but its remit was transparent communication with the general public and environmental NGOs. It’s easy to pay lip service to environmental issues; embedding sustainability into the DNA of a project is another matter. Identifying the big wins is the first challenge; implementation is another. The role of the ERP was to ensure that the site-wide environmental strategies reflected best practice and that early agreement could be sought on their viability and feasibility. Panel member David Strong views the role of the panel as 'extremely beneficial and a model that could be adapted elsewhere'. The ERP was willing to think outside the box. Simon Cochrane, design director at Westfield explains that the panel was 'keen to see a breakthrough in how shopping centres are conditioned and pressed hard for a naturally-ventilated mall design'. However, once the energy demands of both retail units and mall had been factored in, it became apparent that a 'holistic' design making use of more conventional systems would be more energy efficient overall. The final design at Westfield Stratford City uses the mall as a fresh-air plenum, with tempered air supplied into the mall via fresh-air fans. These are designed to operate in free-cooling mode when external temperatures drop below 11ºC, with associated energy and carbon benefits. The extract systems within each retail unit ensure that tempered fresh air is drawn in from the mall, and are linked to the landlord systems at roof level to enable further efficiencies to be gained through heating and cooling recovery. This means 'only doing the job once, whereas in traditional shopping malls, you’re doing it about four times,' explains Cochrane.
Transport
Accessibility by public transport lies at the heart of the Westfield Stratford City project. The adjacent Stratford regional station is the ninth busiest station on the London Underground network and
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