University of Liverpool Heating Infrastructure by Levitt Bernstein

London office Levitt Bernstein have completed an energy centre for the University of Liverpool in the UK, clad in diamond-shaped aluminium scales.

The new building has five pitched roofs, while glazed sections alternately reflect the surrounding listed buildings and allow glimpses of the machinery inside.

Called University of Liverpool Heating Infrastructure Project, the building houses a new energy system that links two existing networks to provide hot water for the whole campus.

The information that follows is from the architects:

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University of Liverpool Heating Infrastructure Project

This project sees the construction of a new, central energy centre to serve the whole of the University of Liverpool’s campus. The design of the new building responds to its sensitive location, within the University’s historic core, and on the principal circulation spine linking the north and south campuses.

The incremental growth of the University had resulted in a system with two separate high temperature hot water systems, operating at different conditions, and leading to inefficiencies in the operation and management of the estate. One was based around a gas turbine–powered combined heat and power plant – the first such installation in a British university when installed in 1985 – and the second was a conventional boiler plant dating from 1966.

A single high temperature hot water system has been constructed, based around the two existing distribution networks. A first contract, undertaken in 2007, linked the two systems, and the second has created a new single energy centre, providing high temperature hot water to the whole campus, with some standby capacity to allow for one boiler to be unavailable for any reason during heating periods.

The site for the new energy centre was previously used for car parking, and is located adjacent to the Liverpool Royal Infirmary buildings recently acquired by the university. It is therefore situated in a sensitive and historic part of the campus, surrounded by listed buildings between the Waterhouse-designed Victorian hospital and the historic core of the university.

The three hospital ward wings terminate with arched balconies facing Dover Street. The new building refers to this context, forming a fourth wing and third courtyard, and repairing the previously disjointed and unsatisfactory urban realm. Its glazed facade facing Dover Street responds to the inset arched balconies and provides tantalising glimpses of the massive boilers, pumps, ducts and valves within the energy centre.

An unusual design solution was needed to satisfy the brief, programme and context of the project. The programme required a planning consent before the final choice of principal plant could be made, whereas only then would the precise size, maintenance and ventilation requirements of the gas engine and boilers be known. We therefore developed a cladding system which avoided the need for any conventional louvres or ventilation grilles, and which can be dismantled to provide access for maintenance and replacement.

The diamond-patterned aluminium cladding is profiled to permit ventilation at any point. Its scale, texture and colour respond to the historic context, which is characterised by a varied roofscape of pitched roofs and facades decorated by openings, string courses and cornices. Overall the new building sits easily beside its Victorian neighbours, without copying any of their materials or details. Depending on lighting conditions sections of glazing permit reflections of adjacent facades, or allow views into the energy centre.

The new energy centre includes a 4 million voltampere natural gas powered combined heat and power plant, comprising of 3×12Mw boilers and a 3.4Mw(e) gas engine.

Removal of redundant plant and alterations, adaptations and extensions of the buried High Temperature Hot Water (HTHW) system to link the south campus to the combined heat and power plant (CHP) have transformed the district heating mains network for the whole campus. High and low grade waste heat from power generation is recycled for domestic hot water and to improve the efficiency of heating buildings during peak demand. An estimated 6,700 tonnes of CO2 will be saved annually

Zenden Hotel and Swimclub

Wiel Arets Architects designed the interior of the Zenden Hotel and Swimclublocated in Maastricht, Netherlands.

Here is the project description:

The Zenden Hotel and Swimclub is located within three monumental town houses near the river Maas in Maastricht, the Netherlands. During the renovation, the scattered program was re-crystallized into an iconographical and integrated whole.

Newly created openings in the hotel’s walls allow for views between all areas of the new program, as well to as the exterior. The renovation led to an abstraction of the structure in both plan and section, not least because all ceilings heights were kept to a maximum. The resulting interior sculpture is completely clad in white, while the exterior inversions are painted anthracite.

Upon entering the hotel, a relaxing lounge welcomes guests and invites them to have a drink, admire the hotel’s pool or simply enjoy the red Japanese maple on the patio. From the lounge, guests can pace past the glass-clad wall in the entrance area and descend to the basement, where one finds the sapphire blue waters of the pool, which retains its original medieval vault. Oppositely, ascending the stairs, nine hotel rooms await their guests, each room unique.

Inside the four new guest rooms, services such as showers, toilets and cupboards have been condensed to blocks, enabling more living space. Corian inlays and night-stands have been integrated into the walls, washing tables placed on floating shelves, TV’s hidden behind reflecting glass and bathroom doors also serve as mirrors.

Photos by Jan Bitter and Joao Morgado

carabanchel-social-housing-by-foa

The architects based their design on a simple concept that is low-cost, sustainable and playful, experimenting with the standard ideas on social housing.

Carabanchel Social Housing
Design Team: Foreign Office Architects
Location: Madrid, Spain
Status: Completion 2007

Foreign Office Architects gave bamboo a leading role in the Carabanchel Social Housing project. There were two main reasons for doing so: it's eco-friendly and it's comfortingly cosy. Operating within a severely limited budget, the Carabanchel Social Housing project is 100 social housing units on the outskirts of Madrid. Regulations set the number of units and the percentages of every size. The maximum height was also a constraint, but not the alignment within the rectangular plot.

Given the adjacency to the future urban park and the North-South orientation of the site, our proposal is to compact the volume within the given height to provide a private garden for the units on the eastern side and to produce double aspect units facing both gardens. In order to achieve this, the units became elongated tubes that connect both facades. Thanks to the compactness of the block, we succeeded in providing fully glazed facades for all the exterior surfaces. The facades have been lined with a 1.5m wide terrace which provides a semi-exterior buffer space enclosed with bamboo screens mounted on folding frames. The screens protect the glazed surfaces from the strong East-West solar exposure, and are able to open to the side gardens when desired.Our target was to provide the maximum amount of space, flexibility and quality to the residences, and to erase the visibility of the units and their differences into a single volume with a homogeneous skin which is able to incorporate a gradation of possibilities.

The primary architectural effect of the building is not dependent on the architects vision, but as an effect of the inhabitants choice, as if the facade was a register at any given moment of a cumulative effect of individuals choices.