building for education special report ©DennisGilbert/VIEW “We’ve shown it works; hopefully others will follow as East
Anglia has a huge amount of forest.” A Passivhaus building has to sit within a ‘duvet’ of
insulation right round it, including underneath. The original plan for a suspended timber floor had to be
abandoned both because of cost and ground conditions so a concrete slab was instead laid on top of Isoquick insulation, which allows the building to be ‘wrapped’ without cold bridges. This slab uses recycled steel, aggregate sourced from a
demolished local mental hospital and ground granulated blast slag, a steel industry by-product. This concrete proved to have another use when floor
coverings were considered. “If you’re assessing carbon over 100 years one of the things
that is really carbon intensive is floor coverings, so we used the concrete slab, polished and diamond ground it and there will be just a need to lacquer it occasionally.” Elsewhere in the building, linoleum made from linseed and
hessian matting sits on recycled glass screed. The building also makes use of some unusual recycled materials. Old benches from a chemistry laboratory were
found to be African iroko wood and used as part of external cladding facing the building’s courtyard alongside some 20-year-old seasoned oak, which had been left unused for many years in a local timber yard. Insulation in the walls is from recycled newspaper and
sections of internal flooring at entrances are made from recycled tyres. Seven locally sourced larch columns, each of about 7.5m
hold up the canopy over the courtyard. The team had wanted to use locally-sourced larch
throughout the building but “the cost was prohibitive for the glulams, which was a real shame, but the Austrian glulam industry is very established, so we used that”, Humphries says. Four interior work pods on the first floor acknowledge local
materials, being clad in nettle fabric, earth board, reed board and hemp and lime render. A lecture theatre protrudes from the building into the
courtyard and sits in a flint bed that acts as a sustainable urban drainage system. The flint has been employed around the building as a
landscaping material and as part of the drainage system. Sourcing such a large quantity proved another procurement
Continued overleaf...
BUILDING PROJECTS
www.architectsdatafile.co.uk
Groundwork and landscaping: Tangent M&E: Gowing & Hunt/ Norwich Electrical Scaffolding: Tubes Bauder roof: Voland Roofing Carpentry: DJ Ottoway Recycled glass screed: Ecoscreed Trading Concrete diamond grinding and polishing: Addex Group Solar shading: Taurus Littrow Dry lining, plaster and render: Grandline Plastering Paint: Total Decorating Lino/rubber flooring: Contract Flooring Solutions Internal glazing: Wensum Glass Ironmongery: A C Leigh Photovoltaics: Evogreen
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