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Am I overly obsessed with the energy performance of buildings designed by Sir Michael Hopkins? Perhaps, given that I've just stumbled on the energy performance of one of his firm's recent buildings for the Wellcome Trust. Keen reader(s) will remember a post I penned on the performance of parliamentary office building Portcullis House back in June. This sparked a very interesting post by Casey Cole at In Picenum who judged it to be a pretty poor performer. I wonder what he'll make of the Gibbs Building?
Here are the numbers quoted on the new offices on Euston Road in the Wellcome Trust's environment report for 2006:
Annual cnsptn kWh/m2 |
Gas Electricity | |
Econ 19 typical |
210 |
358 |
Econ 19 best practice |
114 |
234 |
Gibbs Building predicted |
96 |
213 |
Gibbs Building measured 2005 |
108 |
203 |
Gibbs Building measured 2006 |
73 |
257 |
This performance is against the Econ 19 air-conditioned prestigious office benchmarks. The higher electricity usage last year was put down to the hot weather last summer. Could do better?
There are some other good examples of work being done by the Trust, such as the South Field Project it carried out in Cambridgeshire which achieved BREEAM excellent rating and involved a green roof, planting 12,000 trees, a grey water system and a pretty decent waste management system.
Thanks for that Phil. I've posted a response on my blog here:
http://inpicenum.com/2007/08/24/no-such-thing-as-a-green-office/
Not sure what's going on with trackbacks but they don't seem to be working.
Posted by: Casey Cole | 29 August 2007 at 10:12 AM