Working
Related work
Great Glen House
Brief
Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) required a BREEAM "excellent" headquarters building incorporating open plan offices, meeting rooms, a publicly accessible boardroom and library together with staff facilities; including staff room, gym, changing rooms and workshops. The design of the new building had to reflect the culture of SNH as defined in their "Corporate Strategy, a Natural Perspective" and how SNH wished to project itself to its partners, staff, customers and the wider public. A key feature of the ethos of SNH is that resources must be used wisely including the selection of materials, low operational energy, removing waste from the construction process and represent value for money in both capital and running costs.
Response
Analysing the ethos of SNH informed an approach to minimise the environmental impact of the building, aiming to reduce both the embodied energy and carbon emission in use. This created a building that maximised opportunities for passive design, daylighting and natural ventilation and utilised locally sourced materials. The design located a linear atrium at the heart of the building with offices, library, meeting rooms and boardroom arranged around it to maximise visual connectivity. A cloister at the rear of the building arranges the service functions around a service yard.
Outcome
Orientating the three storey open plan offices to address the views across to the
Embedding sustainability into the core of the design process reduced the need to provide renewable technologies to meet SNH low carbon criteria and allowed the design to be cost effective. Locally sourced untreated larch used as the external and internal cladding sets the building into its context creating a strong corporate message. The building achieved the highest BREEAM rating for an office building at the time of completion.
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