Case Study

Overview

Situated in the heart of Soho, this 92,300 sq.ft. development by Great Portland Estates plc, sits on the corner of Broadwick Street, Poland Street and Livonia Street.

Designed by Emrys Architects, the office accommodation features full height glazing to much of the facades, levels 1 to 6, whilst the ground floor incorporates a fully glazed entrance to the office reception area together with glazed retail and restaurant frontages.

Dane were engaged by BAM in the early stages of the façade design development and cost plan process in conjunction with Emrys and FMDC Façade Consultants. This enabled the achievement of a BREEAM Excellent rating, in part resulting from the inclusion of high performance solar control glass which maximised daylight without solar heat gain, coupled with natural ventilation throughout the offices. Building air tightness of 3.12m3/hr/m2 was also achieved.

KEY ASPECTS OF DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION

The Architectural design intent of large format “punch hole” glazed elements incorporating natural ventilation was achieved by using AWS 114 SG full height parallel opening motorised vents operated by TipTronic automatic gear. The TipTronic window operators were in turn connected to the BMS in such a way as to control groups of windows per floor and on a floor by floor basis. These windows were fabricated “off site” as fully glazed elements within the FW 50 perimeter frames and site installed into SFS walls prior to the installation of the façade faience. The degree of structural frame/slab edge deflection following the dead loading of the faience post window installation, determined that bespoke adjustable brackets, designed by Dane, were required to the FW 50 sub frames to enable final adjustment of the AWS 114 vents which have limited operational tolerance.

Levels 5 and 6 Terrace facades comprise full height FW 60 curtain walling incorporating both fixed glazing and AWS 114 vents, set within aluminium rainscreen cladding. Access to the terraces is via ADS 65 fully glazed doors.

Full height glazing to the office entrance features FW 50 SG curtain walling incorporating ADS 65 automatic pass doors and Boon Edam revolving doors.

The retail shop frontages comprise FW 50 curtain walling with ADS 65 manual and automatic doors. Again, to achieve the Architectural design intent, Dane designed and fabricated bespoke “dart” shaped bronze anodised aluminium ventilation louvres which were integrated within the shop fronts both at high level and full height as required to achieve the M&E performance.

The building was topped off with a high performance acoustic louvre roof plant enclosure installed as part of Dane’s sub contract works.

It is worthy of note that this was the first project undertaken by Dane utilising 3D Modelling to BIM Level 2.