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© Evabloem SUSTAINABILITY
UNStudio campus building harnesses facade for carbon-positivity
A university campus has been recently completed at TU Delft in the Netherlands to a design by UNStudio that provides the client fl exible teaching space in an “energy- generating” building which is also designed to promote “physical, psychological and social health.”
UNStudio – in collaboration with Arup and BBN – addressed the challenge of ever- increasing student numbers by designing a campus to meet the Dutch university’s need for fl exible extra teaching space – now and in the future.
Ben van Berkel, co-founder at UNStudio commented: “The Echo building teaches by example. In this highly compact building, the use of space is maximised, while bringing students from different disciplines in closer contact. Not only can they condense their learning experience and learn from each other, but they can also learn from the building itself.” Claimed to be the most sustainable building at the TU Delft, Echo is intended to “harvest more energy than it uses” during operation, in turn contributing to the university’s ambitions to operate a fully
ADF AUGUST 2022
sustainable campus by 2030. 1200 solar panels, smart installations, good insulation and a heat and cold storage system “ensure that Echo will be able to provide more energy than it requires for its daily operations,” said the architects. This includes user-related energy, such as electricity consumption for laptops, lighting and catering, and 90% of the furniture in the building has also been reused. “Transparency was essential to the design of Echo.” It “ensures maximum daylight inside the building (known to have health benefi ts for the users, but also reducing the need for artifi cial lighting),” and creates a visual connection to the wider campus and to surrounding nature. As such, “a closed-in, ‘institutional’ experience for the users is avoided, while the “open and public” character of the building connects the two sides of the campus and provides a “bright, uplifting and welcoming environment for faculty and students alike.” Overheating is prevented, said the architects, by a combination of sun shading and the “low solar penetration factor “of the glass, plus deep horizontal aluminium
awnings which keep out excess solar heat. These canopies are interconnected by cables along which climbing plants form a “subtle green facade” that fi lters daylight. To ensure clean air in the building, a plenum fl oor is installed above hollow-core slabs. Here, fresh air is pumped up from the fl oor, rather than down from above, thus avoiding circulation around the room. The vents for this system, along with the computer fl oor installation, can easily be relocated, should the layouts of the rooms change in the future.
Not only has a great deal of attention been paid to the environmental impact of the materials used in the construction, but the building has also been designed as much as possible according to principles of circularity. Using large portal constructions with large grid sizes, the columns run along the edge of the building, creating column-free spaces with large spans. The steel trusses have standard sizes and can be dismantled so that they can be reused elsewhere after the lifespan of the building. The hollow-core slabs can also be reused in the future.
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