British Library Extension

London, UK

Location London, UK

Client

British Library and SMBL Ltd

Date 2015 - ongoing

Construction Cost

£500 million

(including fit-out)

Site area 153,923 sq ft approx

Number of Storeys 12

Development Manager

Stanhope

Structural Engineer Arup

MEP Engineer Arup

Landscape Architect

DSDHA

Community Consultation

London

Communications Agency

Planning Consultants GeraldEve Townscape Advisor Tavernor Consultancy Ltd

Heritage Advice

Cordula Zeidler

Cost Advice

Alinea Consulting

The British Library Expansion project is a once in a generation transformation opportunity to extend the British Library’s site to make it the most open, creative, and innovative institution of its kind anywhere in the world.

The development is located at the heart of London’s Knowledge Quarter and will provide 100,000 sqft of Library facilities to significantly expand its outreach, education, conservation, and exhibitions programmes. The Library accommodation is integrated with commercial uses, new headquarters for the Alan Turing Institute and Cross Rail 2 infrastructure. The scheme will provide broad community benefits, including the creation of 3,303 new jobs, training and re-skilling opportunities for local people, and a range of affordable employment premises, which will help to regenerate neighbouring communities. The existing Library will be opened up to the northeast and southwest, creating publicly accessible routes and a series of public realm improvements, including a major new cultural foyer at street level.

Extensive landscaping and most of the ground floor of the extension will be open to the public. 600,000 sqft of commercial space to support large, medium, and small enterprises is positioned above the library facilities responding to the space demand for life science, biotech, and related medical and science-based commerce.

50% percent of the commercial premises have the possibility of being configured as wet labs with the remaining spaces suitable for write-up areas, dry or computation labs or as standard offices.

The project’s holistic sustainability strategy has driven the design process with ambitious targets using the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals framework. These targets take the environmental goals above and beyond current practice with a project ambition to reduce embodied carbon by 40%; operational energy by 60% and water use by 50% from current baseline. BREEAM ‘Excellent’ and WELL ‘Gold’ certifications are targeted with aspirations for BREEAM ‘Outstanding’.

Location Seville, Spain

Date 2005 - 2009

Client Abengoa

Cost €132 million

Area (including parking) 1,033,335 sq ft

Co-Architect Vidal y Asociados arquitectos (VAa)

Structural Engineer Arup

Services Engineer Arup

Health, Life Sciences + Education

Campus Palmas Altas Seville, Spain

Campus Palmas Altas is a new model for an energy efficient business park in Abengoa in the South of Spain. Abengoa’s objectives for their new headquarters complex were to bring the company together from three different buildings in Seville onto a single site and to use the move to unify and radically change working practices: to maximise communication and encourage cross fertilisation between its various divisions. Abengoa is an international technology company whose primary activity focuses on sustainable development in the infrastructure, environment and energy sectors. The scheme comprises seven buildings, five of which are occupied by Abengoa and the remaining two by tenants who have synergies with the client.

The design creates a more compact and urban in character development than conventional business parks, but is also particularly suited to the extreme summertime conditions prevalent in the south of Spain. In total, the buildings provide approximately 505,903 sq ft of office space across highly compact floorplates in self-contained structures between 3–4 storeys in height. The buildings are arranged on either side of a central space which is made up of a sequence of interconnected plazas. The central space unifies all seven buildings and, because of the stepped arrangement, creates a sequence of discrete spaces each of which has slightly different characteristics. In this way, a variety of outdoor spaces ranging from patios to sunken courtyards and terraces, are created which, depending on the prevalent weather conditions, can be comfortably occupied by the buildings’ tenants virtually all year round. The organisation of these spaces aims to reduce the heat load on the building fabric and avoid the creation of ‘heat islands’. The visual mass is broken down by the landscape treatment of the spaces in between buildings.

Colours have been chosen that reflect those found in traditional glazed Andalucían tiles. The structure of each building is formed from in situ concrete with pre-cast elements used for exposed edge cantilevers. The façades are of glass with a ‘floating’ horizontal transom of corrugated aluminium creating a small glazed panel at floor level. Fixed glass louvres of varying densities (depending on orientation) shade the glazing.

Energy-saving criteria are applied across the whole design – from the site layout and the orientation of the campus to the geometry of the buildings themselves, the design of the building envelope and the selection of materials. The design of individual buildings and the linear arrangement of all the buildings maximises self shading, thereby reducing the amount of secondary shading required. Additional measures include photovoltaic panels, a tri-generation plant, hydrogen batteries and chilled beams. It is hoped that the development will become a model for more sustainable office complexes in the future.

Awards

2010

Location London, UK

Date 2013 - 2019

Client London School of Economics

Cost £78 million

Area 188,368 sq ft

Environmental Certification BREEAM Outstanding

Structural Engineer AKT II

Services Engineer Chapman BDSP

Fire Strategy and Acoustic Consultant Hoare Lea

Landscape Architect Gillespies