building services
Uponor gets its TABS on Kingston Uni’s Town House development
F
ORWARD-focused best-practice design for higher education environments requires flexible spaces
that can adapt over time, extending the service life of the building. At Kingston University London’s showpiece Town House development, being built by contractor Willmott Dixon on its Penrhyn Road campus, sustainability is also being built into the building fabric to deliver a BREEAM ‘Excellent’ project that will contribute to the university’s aim of reducing carbon emissions by 35 per cent by 2020. As part of that strategy for a low
energy, low carbon building with flexible spaces, the university’s estates team prioritised early engagement to consider innovative approaches that would reduce the energy consumption for heating and cooling while complementing Grafton Architects’ fair-faced concrete, open plan design. The result was a decision to use a Thermally Active Building System (TABS) from Uponor, enabling the highly efficient, fit-and-forget cooling solution to be embedded within the concrete structure. Designed to transform the learning experience and bring together the
university and the local community, the Town House project started on site in 2017. When finished, in time for the start of the 2019/20 academic year, it will create a centre-piece for the Penrhyn Road campus with facilities l including an LRC (learning resources centre), dance studios and flexible teaching spaces alongside a covered courtyard, cafes and attractive new landscaping. Gary Young from Kingston University
Estates Directorate said: “Connectivity is built into both the concept and the physical design of the building. The community will be able to access the LRC, use the café and attend events, as well as benefitting from the public realm improvements. “Meanwhile, clever design of the three
dimensional space and a focus on social interaction and circulation ensures that the building’s functions overlap and connect physically and visually to encourage cohesion and collaboration.” Uponor first became involved with the
15,000 sqm, five-storey Town House Project around two years before construction began, outlining the options for heating and cooling aligned to the building design. Uponor’s head of special projects, James Griffiths, took the University’s project team to visit a TABS installation at Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) and they quickly saw how it would meet their needs. Using air source heat pumps and solar
panels as its main energy source, the Uponor TABS system will heat and cool the building using water that will flow through pipework. The pipework is fixed and cannot be damaged because it is protected within the fabric of the building and the system will use the thermal mass of the semi precast concrete building’s structure to its advantage, using it to store and exchange thermal energy, thereby saving energy, space and carbon.
www.uponor.com
Future-proofing Loughborough STEMlab C
ABLE management specialist, Unitrunk, has supplied solutions from its RIS (Rapid Installation
Solutions) range for the £17 million STEMlab development at the University of Loughborough. Designed by CPMG Architects and
constructed as part of a major campus investment by the University of Loughborough, the STEMlab scheme provides new engineering, physics, chemistry and bio laboratories for students. The state-of-the–art facility has the capacity to grow and adapt to the University’s changing needs, resulting in 25 per cent redundant capacity in the cable management installation to enable the addition of more power and data cabling in the future. The electrical installation was delivered by electrical contractor, Electract in a 38-
32 highereducationestates
week programme following design of the building services for the heavily serviced facility using BIM. The project involved the installation of
more than three kilometres of cable management, including Uniklip cable tray, Easy Connect cable basket and cable trunking. The primary mains cabling was installed using Unitrunk’s single compartment trunking, while triple compartment trunking for lighting, power and low voltage cabling was laid within the screed along with floor boxes to ensure full distribution at low level without reducing floor to ceiling heights. Richard Hogg from Electract
commented: “Unitrunk’s cable management systems have been designed to enable rapid installation without the need for tools or nuts and bolts, which helped us reduce installation
www.unitrunk.co.uk
times by around a third, ensuring we were able to deliver the project within the University’s business critical deadlines and enable fit out to commence on time.”
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