HEALTHCARE DESIGN PROJECT REPORT
makes people feel more comfortable,” says Jason Whittall, One Creative Environments’ director of architecture and BIM. “It’s essential for dentistry, where accurate colour matching of teeth and dental materials is extremely important. Artificial light can impact on how the eye perceives colour, making natural light crucial to some of the functions.” For this reason, 3.6 m-high glass window units have been fitted in many locations throughout the hospital. “We’ve utilised direct natural light wher- ever it is critical and where possible, a lot of careful design went into the window units to enable maximum light penetration of deep spaces,” says Whittall. “Inevitably though, there are some internal rooms and spaces where we’ve had to exploit borrowed light, too, through glass walls and panels. We’ve kept the need for artifi- cial lighting to a minimum.”
In the dental school most of the clinics are open-bay containing around 20 chairs each, and offer views across the whole clinic for teaching and assessing students.
Low-energy design
Glazing also forms a crucial element of the low-energy building’s mixed-mode heating and cooling system. “A combination of mechanical fans and opening windows circulate the air. Windows run up to the structural soffits, featuring openable vents for night time cooling,” says Whittall. “The atrium is key to the building’s low-energy design. Utilising stack ventilation it draws warm air out of the wings which is collected at the top and heat is extracted and recircu- lated. When the windows are open the mechanical systems shut off so they’re not competing against each other.” The glazing incorporates interstitial film to reflect UV but allow light through, while the top-lights of the window units feature solar shading to help reduce internal heat build-up, and the bottom opens to enable local environmental control and passive cooling and purging at night. The soffits comprise exposed concrete slabs absorbing warm air during the day and cool air overnight, and the walls and curtain walling have a high degree of air- tightness so that air flow can be accurately controlled. As well as the usual solar PVs on the roof, the building also boasts pres- ence and absence control on lighting. These features have contributed to achieving a BREEAM ‘Excellent’ rating at
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The building is clad in attractive metal sheets, many of which are embossed with a design based on a microscopic view of tooth dentine
ADF OCTOBER 2016
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