university building

It is no longer sustainable to look at the performance of buildings in isolation of people that use them. This paper examines what is involved in assessing how a building performs for people. The Rose Bowl at Leeds Beckett University is an iconic building designed to BREEAM Excellent. The experience of staff and pupils in classrooms, offices and lecture theatres was proving to be less than excellent.

The brief for this university campus design required a low energy building for the business school and the education faculty, with a wide variety of room sizes and functions. The work included ensuring that the European Commission (Thermie programme) and the British Ministry for Energy DTI financed the low energy strategy. The energy strategy is based on a well-insulated building, a low energy ventilation system, passive solar energy gain, using direct daylight, using a building-integrated photovoltaic system. The buildings are very compact and well insulated.

Seven years after the groundbreaking Queen's Building, ventilation towers are back on the campus agenda with this passive solar library for Coventry University. How has the design moved forward?