22 August 2022 · By Rob Wilson, photography by Dan Hopkinson
Source: Fielden Clegg Bradley Studios
Source: Fielden Clegg Bradley Studios
Source: Fielden Clegg Bradley Studios
Source: Fielden Clegg Bradley Studios
Source: Fielden Clegg Bradley Studios
Source: Fielden Clegg Bradley Studios
Source: Fielden Clegg Bradley Studios
Source: Fielden Clegg Bradley Studios
Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios has completed the Catalyst building for the University of Staffordshire, designed to be a low-energy, low-water-use building providing a student hub and a home for the university’s apprenticeship and Business School programmes
Sited in the heart of Stoke-on-Trent, the hub is the first completed building of a new campus for the university, for which FCBS designed the concept masterplan.
As such it is designed as a marker for other future campus buildings in both its character and form and creates a strongly defined edge to the campus against greener fields and parkland. External landscaping provides further spill-out and social spaces and in the next phases of campus development there are plans to extend this with wildflower meadows, a pond and a linear woodland garden.
The Staffordshire blue and red brick frame of the exterior is designed to sit comfortably within the local context, with extensive glazing expressing the flexible, open-plan spaces inside.
The new facility is home to the apprenticeship and Business School programmes and is intended to cement the university’s connections with industry, growing the numbers of skilled apprentices, with a target of up to 6,300 by 2030.
Social, study, teaching, administration and industry engagement spaces are mixed throughout the building, with café and event facilities on the ground floor, a library and study spaces above and a dedicated space for higher and degree apprentices on the uppermost floor.
The widely-spaced columns of the structural grid is intended to maximise the building's future flexibility with the exposed concrete frame providing a neutral backdrop, against which timber linings, acoustic panels and furniture define the character of spaces for specific activities.
FCBS describes Catalyst as a ‘low-energy, low-water-use and low environmental impact’ building in line with the university’s net-zero and ‘one planet’ ambitions.
The building envelope is highly efficient, airtight and uses the exposed concrete of the frame as thermal mass, while materials and components were selected to minimise waste, with extensive use of prefabrication and pre-construction.
Heating, cooling and hot water production are via electricity, either directly or via the use of heat pumps, while photovoltaics panels on the roof will generate an estimated 200MWh of electricity a year. North-facing rooflights bring in daylight, but do not add to solar gain.
As far as possible the Catalyst building for Staffordshire University has been designed to prepare for, or even invite, the ‘unknown’ brief of the 21st century.
It is a framework building, which is to say a building with physical frameworks (structural, movement, servicing etc) that allow flexible spatial frameworks, present and future, with digital space taking as important a role as physical space, and digital enablement being central.
The building layout, within natural site constraints, has been developed to maximise open-plan space with soft thresholds; and to maximise innovation in and (re-) interpretation of how it is used. For example, the open-plan strategy towards teaching, arranged via digital tools rather than partition walls, allows immediate up-scaling and down-scaling of teaching delivery enabling the university to flex around changing approaches to and demands of education.
There are some spaces which break new ground in teaching delivery, to the extent that we understand some but not all of the ways they might be used: the invitation to invent is part of the design intent for the building. There are other more familiar teaching layouts, but again these are future-proofed by movable walls.
With ‘open-plan-ness’ being the priority, the structural grid and the very few columns have been set out to the human dimension (and furniture ergonomics) which is less likely to change than learning pedagogues and behaviours over the coming decades. The strategies for movement, escape, WCs etc have all been developed to allow the building to pragmatically work without compromise to the open plan. And it follows that servicing strategies have been developed where possible to allow for change and upgrade over time.
The idea is to let the building evolve with the pedagogy and let the users get on with how it is used. Hugo Marrack, partner, FCBS
The challenge with the Catalyst was providing the flexibility the client required whilst remaining conscious of evolving digital pedagogies and achieving this in a very low-energy building.
The building is all-electric to benefit from the decarbonising electricity grid and features a roof-wide photovoltaic array, both of which are essential for realising the client target of a Display Energy Certificate 'A' rating. Our in-depth energy modelling demonstrated this would be straightforward to achieve if the building was open only for standard office hours, however, the client was keen to maximise the use of their asset and the in-use energy consumption may slightly exceed this aspiration.
Mechanical ventilation was required to achieve an acceptable acoustic environment. To reduce energy use from this system, plant with a wide degree of control was specified, to allow the air volume to be varied in accordance with occupancy levels. Further, a low-noise displacement strategy allows for a comfortable occupied zone without needing to condition the whole room.
Heating is provided via air source heat pumps built into the ventilation plant and heat recovery vastly reduces the heating energy consumption. Exposed thermal mass is utilised to mitigate changes in temperature and allows night cooling to regulate the peak temperatures in the summer. Despite being designed to deliver comfort cooling only – rather than full air-conditioning – the building has performed well in the unprecedented heatwaves.
Soft Landings has been employed from early stage briefing to ongoing post-occupancy evaluation, where we are helping to analyse and optimise the in-use performance. As part of this we produced an accessible user guide to enable occupants to use their building as efficiently as possible. George Mirams, senior engineer, Max Fordham
Start on site Revit/MicroStationFebruary 2020 (following separate demolitions package) Completion Nov 2021 Gross internal floor area 8,800m2 Form of contract JCT DB2016 Design and Build Contract 2016 Construction cost £40 million Architect Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios Client Staffordshire University Structural engineer Momentum Engineering M&E consultant Max Fordham QS Mace Landscape consultant Grant Associates Acoustic consultant Max Fordham Flood risk assessor Peter Brett Associates Transport engineer Phil Jones Associates Project manager Mace Main contractor Vinci Construction UK CAD software used Revit/MicroStation
On-site energy generation (predicted) 20% Annual mains water consumption 350 m³/yr/occupant Airtightness at 50Pa 1.79 m3/h.m2 Heating and hot water load 16 kWh/m2/yr Overall area-weighted u-value 0.35 W/m2K Design life 60 years Embodied/whole-life carbon 700 kgCO2eq/m2 Annual CO2 emissions 12 kgCO2eq/m2
Tags FCBS Higher education Stoke-on-Trent sustainable design
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