After much anticipation, the New Student Centre on Bloomsbury campus at UCL finally opened this Monday. The new centre is a real standout from the other buildings on campus as it is designed to incorporate some of the newest sustainable technologies. As part of the Sustainability Careers Fortnight by Green UCL, tours of the new building took place last week to highlight some of the building’s most sustainable features. Talal Osman and Dominika Leitane, from the Climate Action society, attended one of the tours and here they give us an account of their first impressions of the new building:
On Friday the 15th February, we were fortunate enough to get a sneak peak at the newly developed UCL Student Centre. Our first thought upon entering the building was, there’s no paint. What an unusual thing to notice, but it seemed to stand out. We made sure to ask the Chief Coordinator of the building’s development, David Young, about the lack of paint. What he told us not only made us look at the building with awe, but it made us understand just how special the Student Centre is; and how important it is for all the current and future students of UCL to understand why that is.
With regards to the interior of the building, the walls are laid bare, displaying the concrete slabs for all to see. The purpose behind this is to ensure that during warm seasons, heat is trapped and stored within the walls like a sponge, and in cooler seasons that stored heat is released out. This allows the building to self-sustain its internal temperature. The type of concrete used throughout the building was specifically selected to maximize its ability to absorb and retain heat, greatly reducing the need for energy use. Upon further inspection of the building, we came to realise, every inch of the building was designed from a sustainable perspective.
There are so many things to list about the building, and still so many things that we are yet to discover about it. For example, from our tour of the building we noticed there was an abundance of recycled material used to form things as simple as handrails along the stairs. Furthermore, we were told that even the clay that was excavated during construction was later recycled into artworks by UCL students.
David Young explained that the windows throughout the building were operated via an electronic system to maintain internal temperature; most of the windows are controllable via special buttons, but during winter, the windows will automatically close every now and then to conserve warmth; in the summer, the windows open automatically after a while to cool the building down. Though this can be quite frustrating for a student who wants to cool off during winter, for example, we think that this is something students can get used to and learn to appreciate from a sustainability perspective: imagine how much energy can be saved simply through the use of this automatic system!
Most of the building’s energy is generated via its own renewable energy sources: the roof of the Student Centre, and the neighbouring Bloomsbury Theatre, are covered in solar panels, and the building also boasts 3 environment-friendly geothermal energy pumps. Additionally, technology such as laptops, computers, lights etc, were all designed to an AAA specification rating, making them extremely energy efficient. Even the sinks were created in a manner that allows the building to conserve water.
One thing most people would notice upon entering the building (aside from the paint), is the extremely large sky window. From a design perspective, it opens up the building to a lot of natural light, which makes the already large building seem even larger. From a sustainability perspective, the abundance of natural light ensures that lights within the building can be dimmed or even switched off during the day to conserve energy.
Along the lines of heating, it was quite unusual to notice a lack of ventilation pipes inside the building: this relates to the natural heating and cooling system of the building; although there are in fact some vents scattered around the building, they are very unnoticeable, and were designed specifically to allow air to flow naturally in and out of the building, further reducing the among of energy needed for climate control.
The building was very reminiscent to a transformer, to the naked eye is seems like a simple building, but upon close inspection, you seem to realise the building is in fact alive. There was so much attention to detail throughout the construction of the Student Centre; making it the most sustainable building in London, and maybe even the most sustainable in the UK.
The above paragraph displays the fascinating things surrounding the sustainability aspect of the building, the detail on these aspects were minimal as there are so many features of the building that make it a standout performer in regards to sustainability. Aside from the building’s positive environmental impact, the most important thing about the building that was outlined to me by David Young was that the building was ultimately created as an investment for the most important asset of UCL; the students. This building’s creation is something that has been long overdue, as a student I was blown away by the sheer size, the impressive architecture, the state-of-the-art student facilities, and its impressive sustainable designs. I personally feel like this building has profound importance not only to UCL, but the future of building construction in London, and the future of sustainable construction worldwide.
(All photos cutesy of: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/students/new-ucl-student-centre/about-student-centre)
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