PROJECTS
PROJECTS
Copyright:
AHMM
Belgrove House
Architect:
AHMM
Client:
FMDC
Location:
London, UK
Project Type
1. Office Buildings
At the centre of the Knowledge Quarter on Euston Road opposite King’s Cross and St. Pancras stations in Camden, Belgrove House is proposed as a new specialised office and laboratory building for the life-sciences sector. The proposed scheme respects the nationally significant historic station buildings and responds to the engineering achievements of these in an area of strong character and striking contrasts. Its configuration emerges from a clear, legible arrangement of uses on the site. Life-sciences research laboratories can be located on the largest floorplates at floors 1-3, providing animation to the facades and a public window. HQ style offices can be located on floors 5-9. The 4th floor can serve as a dedicated ‘collaboration hub’.
Read more:
< https://www.ahmm.co.uk/projects/office/belgrove-house/ >
Our Contribution:
In this current work, we carried out detailed analysis considering the design requests as expressed by AHHM, FMDC and Atelier10 with regard to glazing, shading, ventilation strategies, performance, etc. We focused on 4 issues: (1) properly model the Double Skin Façade systems in our Dynamic Thermal
modelling tools, (2) advise on glazing and shading with increased transparency and enhanced performance, (3) identify potential bottlenecks and raise performance “flags” and (4) suggest further issues to be
considered.
Shading Use and Real Life Daylight
We discussed how the system can be properly tuned in order to avoid using the shading too often with impact on views out and real life daylight. Essential to avoid over-using shading is to account for the shading benefit of the plants in the DSF cavity, by increasing the threshold accordingly. If we don’t account for the plants’ shading effect, we’ll overuse shading, unnecessarily decreasing real life daylight levels and
views out.