News
Old Gateway to New Law 24 September 2007
Consulting engineers at Pick Everard are involved in the final stages of detailed designs for sustainable and energy efficient building services for the new £22m Faculty of Business and Law building for De Montfort University (DMU) in Leicester, due to be completed for September 2009.
The new U-shape building, designed by Nottingham based-architects CPMG, will be the cornerstone of the redeveloped campus and will include large lecture theatres, a ‘mock’ law court, a law library, a distinctive, separate postgraduate and professional suite with high-tech IT facilities and will connect with the Performance Arts Centre for Excellence building.
John Thompson, director at Pick Everard and project director explains, “Our role, as building services consulting engineers, is to ensure that systems involving energy, light and ventilation in this new faculty building are designed to be innovative, sustainable and as cost effective as is possible.”
Working toward a BREEAM ‘very good’ rating, Pick Everard used dynamic thermal modelling to reduce the building’s carbon footprint and make it energy efficient and comfortable. Sustainability has been addressed with design solutions that make the most of natural ventilation and daylight and by selecting options such as ground source heating and tracking solar arrays. Installations will be designed in line with DMU energy use policy.
The new building will also be near to Magazine Gateway, a 15th century monument, once an entrance to Leicester Castle, that Richard III rode through on the way to defeat at the Battle of Bosworth on 21st August 1485. Magazine Gateway has been isolated in the middle of the traffic on the inner ring road for a long time but now will be on-campus. All the traffic will flow around one side of the ancient structure, making it more accessible and a key feature in a new, tree-lined pedestrian plaza, to be known as Magazine Square.
A revised road layout means that all underground services - including twin 21 and 18-inch trunk water mains - are being diverted before the new university facilities can be built. Pick Everard’s civil engineering teams are working with Severn Trent Water and DMU to ensure that supply interruptions to homes and businesses in local streets are kept to an absolute minimum.
