I thought a great starting point would be to talk about the most radical requirement of the brief - the University's aim for the building to be ultra low in embodied carbon and as near to a carbon sink as possible, with a lifespan of 100 as opposed to the standard 60 years.
We are delighted that a client has finally incorporated this into a brief ? for many years Architype has been very vocal on the subject and the criticality of tackling embodied energy. As we design more operationally efficient buildings, and the embodied component heads over the 50% lifecycle mark ? it is surely negligent to not consider the rest of the cycle.
At competition stage, our aim was to use as much locally sourced material as possible, and materials that sequester carbon to bring down the embodied carbon per square metre figure. We designed the building to be made from a hybrid glulam, Brettstapel and Larsen truss structure, using Thetford forest timber; with timber floors, including a raised floor and minimal pad foundations; a rammed chalk lecture theatre; and East Anglian grown hemp insulation throughout. We also incorporated a rainscreen thatch cladding made from Norfolk grown Yeoman wheat and reed, and landscape features made from flint.
These features bring the added benefit of reinforcing and reinvigorating local supply chains, and increasing the amount of renewable material in the building ? again the university were keen for this figure to be as near to 100% as possible.
Benchmark figures are rare ? and we worked hard to find some comparable data.
M4i targets from 2002 suggest that 500kgCO2/sqm is the holy grail - although given that these targets were issued a decade ago, they do not assume the increased embodied energy of Passivhaus construction (triple glazing, increased insulation, MVHR kit, and increased attention to air-tightness) and need to be treated with caution as were likely produced for the standard 60 years lifespan.
On a previous Architype project ? Masdar City in Abu Dhabi in 2010, we were working with 550kgCO2/sqm and 100 years, although this excluded services, and also foundations. It was hard to achieve this figure, although we managed it on a number of plots by prioritising the use of local materials where possible, and rationalising excessive use of concrete and crazy structural antics.
Most recently, Atkins' Masterplanning tool (2010) had a review of embodied energy across a number of sectors. Again it's likely that this was for 60 years as opposed to 100 years, and suggests that achieving 845kgCO2/sqm for university building was likely best practice.
To evaluate the embodied energy over a 100-year lifespan of our competition stage proposal, we used our evolving Rapier software
in addition to Franklin Andrews' Lifecycle.What is amazing is that even without the inclusion of sequestration in the calculation, we are still well within the Atkins figures for best practice for university buildings at 744kgCO2/sqm. However, with carbon sequestration included, we are at a staggering 168kgCO2/sqm!
But what does this really mean?
We comparatively modelled our low embodied energy construction against a conventionally built Passivhaus building. With our construction, the embodied energy emissions equal cumulative operational emissions after just 9 years. With the conventionally built construction, embodied energy emissions equal the operational energy emissions after a whopping 38 years.
Given the importance of tackling carbon emissions now, an approach that prioritises locally sourced and renewable materials makes a huge - and planet saving - difference.
Architype are speaking about the UEA Norwich Research Park Enterprise Centre as part of the Centre for the Built Environment business support seminar series: "
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