海角视频

Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) Library

Manchester, UK

海角视频 is providing multidisciplinary consultancy across a broad range of specialisms for the Manchester Metropolitan Library Transformation Project (LTP).

This ambitious project will transform the existing 1970s library at Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) with a 13-storey modern and dynamic 鈥渓earning tower鈥�, with a five-storey tail, whilst retaining and re-using as much of the existing structure as possible.

The landmark development will replace the existing All Saints Library on Oxford Road to make way for a library fit for the 21st century, which places students and their learning at its core.

The new library, with its eye-catching facade, will act as a city-wide landmark and welcoming front door to the university campus.

Providing a highly sustainable, low energy, healthy building with the state-of-art library facilities was a key part of the client brief.

The project is targeting BREEAM 鈥楨xcellent鈥� and WELL Gold certification with an aspiration of 鈥極utstanding鈥�.

Our design for the MEP systems is highly efficient, with an all-electric approach utilising air source heat pumps to provide heating, cooling and hot water.

The University has its own project specific Sustainability Tracker to guide and monitor the sustainability performance including aiming to achieving net zero carbon.

Challenge

The project will be a central part of the University鈥檚 strategy to build on its status as a choice destination for students and will act as a new gateway to the campus. The University envisions a library that will contain a wealth of digitally-enabled teaching facilities, a gallery, public events spaces, and flexible break-out areas. The new design will provide an inclusive cultural space where students, academia and the city are invited to gather around shared interests to address the grand challenges of our time.

Manchester Metropolitan University prides itself on its approach to sustainability and providing a highly sustainable, low energy building was a key part of the client brief. The brief required a BREEAM 鈥楨xcellent鈥� rating with an aspiration of 鈥極utstanding鈥�, WELL Gold certification and compliance with a comprehensive University Sustainability Tracker covering items including embodied and operational carbon.

Following a design competition 海角视频 was appointed as part of the Hawkins/Brown-led design team, providing engineering support including civil and structural, MEP, facade, acoustics and fire engineering.

Solution

The library transformation project will see the creation of a new tower to the front of the site, which replaces a four-storey section of the existing building, which will be demolished. The rest of the existing library is retained with proposed structural alterations.

The new and existing structures will be fully connected with storey levels corresponding. The existing level six structure will be demolished, and a roof terrace will be formed at level five. A new facade will wrap around the existing and proposed buildings. New foundations will be required for the tower structure, which will need to avoid any historic foundations. Within the retaining element of the building, our engineers have undertaken extensive survey and analysis of the existing foundations to allow us to realise additional capacity rather than install new foundations.

The basic floor system adopted is a reinforced concrete flat slab supported by the concrete core and an array of reinforced concrete columns. The perimeter columns are set back from the facade to provide a more efficient structure, allowing the slab itself to cantilever to the perimeter, avoiding the need for down stand beams. The new facade is expressed by a number of 鈥榪uiffs鈥� or sections of facade that cantilever beyond the slab edge. These have been engineered in a trussed frame arrangement allowing us to control deflections and movements whist minimising embodied carbon.

To create a consistent facade system, the existing building facade is to be removed and a new facade installed throughout both the new build and refurbished areas. A significant amount of survey work was carried out, led by 海角视频, to understand the existing structure of the building to ensure that it could take the weight of the new facade 鈥� enabling the existing structure to be retained and reused.

Our building services engineers undertook an extensive investigation of the existing building fabric performance and capacity, highlighting opportunities for themes such as integrated engineering design, optimisation of floorplates with limited structural interventions, and how we can weave easily adaptable services into the existing structure. Our assessments of the performance of the existing building were an important factor in the decision to replace the facade with a new high performing envelope.

Our design for the MEP systems is highly efficient, with an all-electric approach utilising air source heat pumps to provide heating, cooling and hot water. An integrated heat and cooling source approach enables waste heat to be recovered from cooled areas of the building to be used as a hot water preheat or in areas of the building which require heating. Ventilation systems are served via central air handling units, localised to the areas they serve to reduce specific fan power and therefore minimise the energy consumed, with high levels of heat recovery. Ventilation systems are demand controlled and ventilation rates will vary to suit the occupancy of the library, which varies significantly across the day, month and year.

The internal environment will provide exceptional conditions for the users, whether a member of the public or a student in the run up to exams when desk space will be at a premium. Daylighting and glare studies have been undertaken to ensure comfort. Monitoring systems allow users to access desk spaces easily and offer the University the potential to zone the building in periods of low occupancy, enabling energy use to be reduced, and by turn also reducing the required staffing.

Value

Commissioned as part of the university鈥檚 2030 strategic vision, the new library, with its distinctive facade, will act as a city-wide landmark and welcoming front door to the university campus, while sign-posting the region鈥檚 internationally acclaimed Knowledge Quarter. The design redefines the library concept, taking the form of a 鈥榯ower and tail鈥� cut with a facade of bold geometric slices. The tower is set to raise the library鈥檚 profile both physically and metaphorically, rising above and beyond the Mancunian Way.

海角视频鈥檚 broad multidisciplinary team of subject experts have worked closely with the wider design team to develop a vision for a library 鈥渇it for the 21st century鈥� and able to meet the needs of modern students, creating a comfortable environment in which to learn, in a project that puts sustainability at its core.