The John Bull Building, Peninsula Medical School, Plymouth
Acting as a bridge, the John Bull Building allows natural habitat to flow underneath its structure, providing pleasant and stimulating research environment.
This building champions environment conscious design, supporting a space which houses teaching, office space, research laboratories and simulated hospital accommodation. Features include extensive use of daylight and solar shading, natural ventilation, night cooling utilising exposed concrete thermal mass in conjunction with the proprietary Building Management System and use of sustainable, maintenance free materials like untreated cedar cladding and the stone from local quarries, combining traditional materials and architectural elements with the contemporary glass and metal in curtain walling. Sustainability and energy-saving principles include:
- Exposed concrete slab soffit wherever appropriate to facilitate ‘night time cooling effect’ in conjunction with the building management system (BMS);
- 4m floor-to-floor heights and windows at high
and low level to maximise effective natural
ventilation wherever possible; - External solar control shading with integrated maintenance walkways to the south elevation to
avoid solar heat gain whilst maintaining views; - A combination of the atrium concept, extensive clerestory windows and high window head heights
to maximise the penetration of natural light into
deep plan areas; - Distributed heating systems incorporates time and temperature zoning to allow departments within buildings to have individual control. Heating systems
is weather compensated i.e. run at reduced temperature during warmer weather and have
optimum start/stop control; - The building has a proprietary Building Energy Management System (BEMS). Individual plant rooms have the ability to operate alone without reliance on the centralised ‘head end’. The BEMS also controls the night time cooling regime, which uses the opening of fenestration to cool the building fabric;
- Plant rooms located as close as possible to the each individual area serviced to minimise duct lengths.
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