Monday, 05 July 2021
A carbon-neutral brewing business, charitable almshouses for older people and a revitalised community centre in the heart of Lenton are among the designs by University of Nottingham students to reimagine and reinvigorate Nottingham City Centre.
A selection of the Nottingham-focused architectural projects from Department of Architecture and Built Environment will be on display to the public in a free exhibition at St Mary’s Church in the Lace Market from 9 July (4pm) -13 July 2021.
Dubbed Project: Nottingham, the designs respond to a variety of briefs and sites, with design drivers including ‘carbon neutral’ Nottingham, the city’s Covid-19 recovery, climate change mitigation; the recovery of high streets, and green transport, such as the addition of cycle lanes and alternative methods of transport.
Locations included: new housing on the old fruit market in Sneinton; retrofitting the old Boots BioCity site for new offices; redeveloping the former People’s College site; new almshouses in Nottingham City Centre; redesigning the former Broadmarsh Shopping Centre into a cultural quarter; new mixed-use buildings at the Castle Meadow Business Park (the location of the old HMRC buildings); a design to make a carbon-neutral brewery manufacturing business in the proposed Island Quarter alongside community-based projects (e.g. Lenton Community Centre) and novel approaches to care and homelessness in the city.
“We are exhibiting student work in the city centre to showcase the Nottingham-based projects our students have been working on throughout the last year. The work illustrates how much they care about Nottingham, and how much they want to input with ideas to regenerate parts of the city through considered building innovation. Some of the briefs were developed with input from - and in collaboration with - city officials and private companies, such as Nottingham city planners and other key stakeholders such as Nottingham City Homes, Igloo Regeneration, FE colleges, who provided feedback to guide the themes and locations.”
The student projects focused on diverse themes and approaches ranging from building design, planning and urban design, retrofitting and repurposing buildings, building comfort and energy-efficiency, to cutting building carbon emissions and renewable energy systems integration in design.
A condensed online version of the DABE Exhibit!21, which is the end-of-year show for the Department of Architecture and Built Environment, will also be displayed from 10 July.
Case study one: The Lenton Centre/The Lenton Community (TLC)
Jenny Kendall, 21, from Stourbridge in Worcestershire is a third-year BArch student at the University of Nottingham. Her project, entitled TLC - The Lenton Centre/The Lenton Community is a development encompassing a new, sustainable social housing scheme - on what is currently a brownfield site - and the retrofit of an existing, well-loved community facility next door.
Originally a public washhouse, the Centre, which is on Willoughby Street, was built to provide a place to bathe and clean clothes for Lenton residents. A swimming pool was added in the 1960s and it was later turned into a community centre taken on by the council before being community-run from 2005. Fast forward 16 years and the community still has the same drive and determination to use the space but the layout is not 100 per cent suited to users’ needs.
“The Lenton Centre is a lovely building with a long history that does amazing outreach from exercise to English language classes and swimming lessons. It’s an important community hub but it’s somewhat hidden from view which means lots of people may not know it is there. It was interesting to work within the footprint of the existing building. My version of sustainability includes retaining as much of the original building as possible but to reconfigure its architecture and spaces to enhance its visual appeal, functionality and accessibility.”
Jenny’s masterplan focuses on creating spaces for wellbeing and social interaction for the community. It does this through the design of a new public square for The Lenton Centre’s visitors, and through shared gardens with biodiverse planting for the new housing development and a public cafe.
She also used the brown field site to the south of the current elevation to make it the new façade for The Lenton Centre with a more public-facing entrance.
Inside The Lenton Centre, Jenny focused her attention on the hall, the swimming pool and opening up the complex layout of windowless corridors which are confusing for new visitors to navigate around. She also restored many of the special architectural features of the original 1930s building that had been bricked up or lost.
The Centre is frequently used by the West Area Project, which supports people with learning disabilities. Due to the age of the existing Centre, there is a lack of accessible entry points or facilities poolside. Jenny’s concept uses adaptive features to make the Centre more wheelchair-friendly. She also added a sensory room and a disabled toilet.
In the hall, which can host anything from theatre productions to English-speaking lessons and workouts, Jenny used adaptive acoustics to reduce echoes and enhance the sound quality in the room. Jenny has also redesigned the existing chimney, which is hidden away between a jumble of 1960s extensions and storage units, to be taller. At night it acts as a light which is a beacon to the community, while holes at the top intentionally catch the wind and pull cold air down into a natural ventilation system to cool the hall.
For the swimming pool, Jenny added a ‘living’ green roof to retain the heat and huge windows to flood the space with natural light. She also developed a sustainable energy ‘biodigester’ boiler to heat the pool in a more affordable and environmentally-friendly way. The boiler using food waste collected from the next-door social housing, and originally grown in the community garden.
As a council housing scheme, it was important that the houses were built at a relatively low cost. To ensure this was achievable all of the house types work off of the same structural plan. This reduces the cost for materials as the same elements can be mass ordered. This is also more sustainable as should an element need replacing it can more easily be sourced. However, there are individual spaces inside each house which are unique, giving residents a sense of individuality.
The mixed housing types help to create a diverse neighbourhood while the threshold spaces between adjoining houses are designed to encourage interaction between neighbours and the wider Lenton community.
“With her talent and vision, Jenny has respectfully-redesigned the Centre, which is a much-loved and valuable resource for our community. She worked closely with us throughout to address our diverse user needs by improving the layout, acoustics and lighting inside, while still retaining many of the original architectural features. It’s a fantastic concept that would breathe new life into the building and put us on the map to potential new users.”
In addition to the end of year exhibition, Jenny is displaying her TLC project in the Lenton Centre over the summer. She also runs an Instagram account, @J.K_architecture, which explores architectural design and showcases her latest work.
Case study two: Carbon-Neutral Brewery
Daniel Johnson, 23, and from Nottingham is a student on the postgraduate MArch Architecture and Sustainable Design course. His project is entitled: Carbon-Neutral Brewery.
The site is located within the proposed Island Quarter – currently 40-acres of wasteland just 500 metres from Nottingham train station. Daniel’s concept, which fits into a recently approved masterplan for the site, comprises a 2.8 hectare plot in the south-east corner containing two derelict warehouses - originally part of the Boots the chemist empire. The vision for the regenerated site is to introduce sustainable industry back into a vibrant mixed-use development, helping to create jobs and preserve the city’s heritage.
The brief specifically required a combination of warehousing, manufacturing, laboratory, office and retail space as a new, flagship headquarters of a local brewing supplies business.
As a Nottingham resident himself, Daniel acknowledges that despite being situated at an important intersection between the city centre and surrounding residential areas, the brownfield site is currently an eyesore, and one of the first things seen by anyone arriving by train.
“Redevelopment of the decaying warehouse buildings, would both help preserve some of Nottingham’s key industrial heritage and provide a better impression of the city. The brief required more space than the two existing warehouses alone could provide, and so an extra new build was proposed to the south of the James Alexander Warehouse, which is Grade II-listed, and will be restored to make the most of its original architectural features and offer an impressive entrance for the company’s employees and visitors.”
Re-introducing an industrial use so close to the edge of the city centre could create challenges - namely with increased vehicle movements and associated safety concerns and noise - so the placement in the south-east corner also keeps the brewery close to the A612 for easy truck access and safer pedestrian movements. Additionally, the re-designed service yard and warehouses can help buffer the rest of the Island Quarter from noise emanating from the rail track.
The existing buildings are perfectly orientated to the sun for passive solar gain throughout the warmer months, allowing the new proposed uses to be consciously arranged in a way to aid passive design. For example, the laboratories require cooling to low temperatures, and so these were positioned on the north side of the building to limit the solar gain experienced in the summer, whereas the offices tend to require heating for most of the year, meaning these got positioned on the south.
An atrium was introduced to the centre of the plan of the listed warehouse, allowing access to the labs and offices whilst creating the space for a grand entrance hall that also contains the staff canteen.
Additionally, atriums can be used to introduce daylight to the centre of a plan that otherwise wouldn’t have access to side windows, allowing the sun to naturally light the interior and reducing electricity consumption. The atrium in the listed building also allows for stack ventilation to take place, by the movement of air from the south entering the building, absorbing heat from the interior, and rising through buoyancy to exit through openings within the atrium roof, creating a pressure gradient that draws further air through the system, helping the building stay cool in the summer. The opening degree is controlled by a remote actuator, allowing automatic adjustment to internal conditions by the building control system.
Other natural daylighting solutions are found in the sawtooth roof design of the proposed new warehouse and the introduction of roof lights for the first-floor refurbished rooms.
The site has flooded in the past, and so landscaped gardens, rainwater harvesting and sustainable urban drainage solutions are all proposed to mitigate surface water run-off. The gardens also contain reed beds which naturally purify wastewater.
An EnerPHIT (PassivHaus for refurbishment) approach to the structure was followed, which places high emphasis on superinsulation, reducing thermal bridging and controlling air movement. The proposed solution is to install a structural timber frame within the shell of the existing warehouse, and natural wood fibre insulation to ensure better thermal comfort for building users.
Both materials are characterised by low embodied carbon, and act as carbon sinks by absorbing CO2 during the timber growing phase and then “locking it in” within the building. This also allows the characteristic brick facades to be left relatively unaltered, maintaining their character.
Residual energy demands are proposed to be met by installing solar PV panels on the roofs of the existing non-Listed warehouse and the proposed new build. These roofs face south, so they can gain the maximum amount of solar energy.
Case study three: Houseplace
Lottie Smith, from Stamford, Lincolnshire, is a 6th year MArch student. She worked at Lathams Architects in the Lace Market, Nottingham for three years during her studies and has just returned full time. Her project is entitled: Houseplace.
The site Lottie reimagined is a void on Short Hill, Nottingham; an unintentional window into the Lace Market from the south approach to the city, caused by the Luftwaffe bombing raids of 1941. The original Georgian townhouses and 19th-century lace factories were damaged beyond repair and never rebuilt. Cleared and converted into a car park, the site is now being developed with a new infill building of residential accommodation.
“I saw the void as a benefit not a problem; it was functionless and free to become anything I wanted to design. Its lack of purpose encouraged me to investigate what once filled the space, so I researched as far back as possible.
“I work for a conservation specialist in the Lace Market, which is such a beautiful and historic area. I’d always been curious about what must have been in that void originally and through lots of historical research I found out almshouses for five poor widows were originally built there as early as 1500.”
The finding inspired Lottie’s modern take on the concept of charity-funded homes for the vulnerable and elderly. It would be alms housing in the heart of the city centre for residents who are still independent enough to make the most of everything on their doorstep.
Lottie’s thesis conclusions found that space which is undefined generates life and opportunity for spontaneous social interaction, as people are comfortable to behave in an unconditioned way within the architecture.
She adds, “The proposed building design weaves in the concept that, as the architect, you are not controlling usage of all space, but rather allowing inhabitation to define how space is used. This seemed to overlap with how modern almshouses for the elderly should be designed and was something that the pandemic shone a light on given how inflexible our rooms were for home working and schooling.
“Looking back historically, before different rooms had strictly-defined uses we once lived in one room called ‘houseplace’ the heart of the home where you would sleep, eat and play - it had multiple functions. Lottie’s design gives a nod to that traditional concept and features pockets of undefined spaces.
Lottie designed the almshouses so that each one feeds onto an oversized corridor, which isn’t just an entrance or a transitional space it could also be an entertaining or meeting place which increases the chances for social interaction between neighbours.
Part of the scheme is to allow a new public route through the site, to allow a direct link from Stoney Street to the ancient Malin Hill. This then extents to reopen and reinstate Long Stairs, once the stairwell bridge between the low-level Narrow Marsh housing and the towering lace factories at the top of the cliff. This aimed to add another connection point along Cliff Road to the new Broadmarsh area transformation. The idea was to encourage movement through part of the site, to increase atmosphere and enjoyable ‘people watching’ for the alms residents.
The materials used in the construction of the almshouses are very subtle. Red brick was a natural choice due to the surrounding context, but also for its flexibility. Built buildings can be dismantled and altered, or their bricks can be reused in new buildings. The red colour is also friendly and the proposal included accents of buff coloured concrete, drawing the context of the sandstone cliff, which the site sits on. The warmed colours encourage the building to feel inviting, far from grey, cold steel and concrete construction that many people might expect for city centre living.
Case study four: S.E.L.F HAVEN
Farheen Qutub, 29, from Chennai in India, is a student on the MArch Architecture and Sustainable Design course. Her project is entitled S.E.L.F Haven and relates to the redevelopment of the former Nottingham College campus on Maid Marian Way, previously known as People’s College.
The site, which covers approximately 1.118 hectares in total, is located at the southern end of Maid Marian Way on the western edge of Nottingham city centre.
Farheen specifically focused on residential block-G in the S.E.L.F (Self-Sustainable; Ecological Integrity; Lifelong caring; Friendly community) HAVEN project, which is a mixed-use housing scheme comprising 56 residential units.
The intent is to protect and strengthen the historic heritage and urban public space and design a complex that is adaptive to the surrounding natural environment. The end goal is to design a safe neighbourhood which facilitates healthy behaviour and contains desirable and energy-efficient homes.
“From an urban design point of view, the master plan is designed to elevate the surrounding public realm. The residential units are visually connected within the site and with the neighbouring streets to factor in a sense of community and belonging, coupled with comfort.”
The project was intentionally designed to limit the height of the new development to a maximum of three floors to ensure strategic views to and from the Castle are protected and to prevent existing homes nearby being overshadowed.
Farheen who is a recipient of the Developing Solutions Masters Scholarship sponsored by the University of Nottingham, designed the buildings to follow the area’s natural contours - gradually stepping down from the north to south of the site.
The development is intended to accommodate units of different sizes and types from terraces to apartments, which hopes to attract more varied residents – from young professionals, to families and the elderly. The residential units are connected via bridges instead of stairs, which makes them more user friendly for people of all ages.
Each home has a balcony and every unit is designed to afford residents magnificent views of the Castle. A new public plaza adjacent to the Olde Trip to Jerusalem, acts as a gateway to the Castle and a central space for residents to relax and mix. Further green spaces have been added around the complex to enhance wellbeing, while the car park has been moved underground out of site.
A self-sustainable, community approach is proposed, such as the edible garden and community retail units on site. Meanwhile an inward-facing courtyard around the residences, which houses the children’s play area, provides ‘natural’ surveillance.
One of the primary goals was to achieve the Passivhaus standard. Careful consideration was given to use materials with low U-value, high insulation, triple glazing and design strategies to maximise the use of daylight and natural ventilation has enabled the building to meet the Passivhaus annual heating demand. In addition, a solar panel energy system is considered for the south roof as a renewable energy source for the homes. Overall, the building has achieved the key environmental strategies that determine the occupants' quality of life.
Story credits
More information is available from Professor Lucelia Rodrigues on lucelia.rodrigues@nottingham.ac.uk or Emma Lowry, Media Relations Manager (Engineering) on 0115 84 67156 or Emma.Lowry@nottingham.ac.uk.
Notes to editors:
About the University of Nottingham
Ranked 32 in Europe and 16th in the UK by the QS World University Rankings: Europe 2024, the University of Nottingham is a founding member of the Russell Group of research-intensive universities. Studying at the University of Nottingham is a life-changing experience, and we pride ourselves on unlocking the potential of our students. We have a pioneering spirit, expressed in the vision of our founder Sir Jesse Boot, which has seen us lead the way in establishing campuses in China and Malaysia - part of a globally connected network of education, research and industrial engagement.
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