As the pressures of the Climate Emergency intensify, a key challenge for the nation’s historic institutions is how to reconcile the demands of modern – and still evolving – standards of sustainability within highly sensitive settings. How can historic buildings and estates be made genuinely fit for the future?
Over the last decade, Wright & Wright’s work for three historic institutions: the British Museum, Lambeth Palace and St John’s College, Oxford – nationally significant touchstones of culture, faith and academia, respectively – has explored these complex concerns. In each case, the architectural response has been designed to be strategically transformational in the long term, solving logistical problems, unlocking physical space and planning for a future life and relationship with users that will be inconceivably different from past experience.
In working with buildings and sites from a range of eras, Wright & Wright draw on the exemplars of the past, but also have the confidence to think boldly, seeing conservation and heritage as part of a broader picture. Responding to buildings that are centuries old demands a different and more expansive mindset than can get beyond the usual short-term thinking. The very existence such structures is testament to the impact of changing imperatives over time, and how architecture can be adapted, remodelled and made fit-for-purpose; in effect, extending the historic continuum.
The British Museum
A new SouthWest Energy Centre (SWEC), paired with the East Road Building (ERB) and Incoming Substation (ISS) will deliver carbon reductions of 40% across the museum’s Bloomsbury estate.
Established in 1753, the British Museum was the first public national museum in the world. Over time, its buildings and collections have coalesced into a world class institution dedicated to human history, art, and culture with eight million objects and six million visitors annually. The expansion of the collections in the 19th century is reflected in physical and organisational change through successive phases of building, from austere Greek neoclassicism to the millennial grand project of the Great Court.
Wright & Wright’s ongoing involvement is focused on decarbonising the museum’s entire Bloomsbury estate, while addressing issues of strategic planning, fabric repair and the management of its Grade I listed buildings. This programme is set against the backdrop of the global climate crisis, and the collective ambition to realise a net zero carbon future. It was given further impetus by the London Borough of Camden’s 2019 declaration that humanity faces a climate and ecological emergency. The programme will deliver transformational, sustainable change through limited, strategic intervention in discrete areas of the campus. Designed to achieve BREEAM ‘Excellent’ rating, a proposed energy centre, will deliver estate-wide carbon reductions of 45%, while building on only 1.8% of the site’s footprint. This ‘keyhole surgery’ will end the museum’s reliance on gas fossil fuels for heating, instead utilising the latest all electric water and air source heat pump technology. Once operational, it will result in an estimated net saving of 1,700 tonnes of CO2 annually, the equivalent of 3,400 return flights between London and Glasgow.
Naturally lit and ventilated workspace will help attract the best and brightest talent to the museum.
Like much of the energy system, parts of the museum’s fire, flood, and life-safety infrastructure are at the end of their service. The energy centre programme will upgrade critical operational infrastructure, including new sustainable drainage systems capable of accommodating a 1 in 100 year flood event and deliver an overall 40% increase in capacity to withstand the more general effects of climate change.
Crucially, this initiative will bestow long term benefits by reducing operational costs and avoiding the increased maintenance associated with outdated systems. All future renovation and renewal projects will be able to take advantage of the resource-efficient infrastructure, including the masterplan development, the subject of an international competition launched earlier this year. This will involve a major remodelling of the Western Range, which currently houses the Greek and Roman collections.
The New South West Energy Centre viewed from the servicing road.
Neglected external areas will be transformed into high-quality landscaped space.
“The British Museum is as much a piece of history as the objects it houses but some of its buildings are now more than 200 years old,” said Charlie Mayfield, chair of the museum’s masterplan committee. “The masterplan is essential in bringing this ageing building into the 21st century and achieving our aims of reducing our carbon footprint. The path to net zero will be achieved by completely overhauling an outdated energy infrastructure while respecting the historic architecture that is a cornerstone of Bloomsbury.”
Lambeth Palace
Lambeth Palace Library marked the start of a holistic strategy to future-proof the palace and its estate.
Home to the Archbishops of Canterbury for 800 years, the buildings of Lambeth Palace are resonant with history and a Scheduled Ancient Monument. Over the centuries, the Palace and its occupants have marked momentous events as well as celebrated the routines of daily life, worship, ministry and hospitality. Wright & Wright’s masterplan for the Palace estate augments and extends this continuum through a programme of repair, remodelling and new interventions. It also responds to the wider strategic goal set by the General Synod for all parts of the Church of England to work to become carbon net zero by 2030.
The first phase consolidated the Church’s archives – the most important collection of religious artefacts outside the Vatican – in a purpose-designed building in the gardens of Lambeth Palace. Completed in 2019, it incorporates a study centre, exhibition space and conservation studio with extensive archive stores. At its heart, in the great tradition of the monastic library as a scholarly refuge, is the reading room, a major set-piece space that anchors and animates the building.
Mindful of the imperative to conserve resources in the longer term, the new building is designed to endure and age gracefully. Its effectiveness is enhanced by its negligible consumption of energy, low-carbon emissions and a philosophy of low maintenance. Half the library’s energy requirements are generated by photovoltaic panels on the roof, while rainwater is sustainably channelled into a new pond in the Archbishop’s garden, encouraging biodiversity, as part of a wider landscaping strategy.
The highly insulated masonry mass acts as a mechanism of natural heating and cooling while the largely imperforate form shields the Archbishop’s garden from noise and pollution generated by traffic on Lambeth Palace Road. As well as harmonising with existing historic elements, the mixture of handmade bricks offers variations in hue and texture, generating a visually rich palette which endures over time, subtly changing with age.
The Church Commissioners defined the requirement for the project to be an exemplary building in terms of social and environmental sustainability. The planning department required the project to be BREEAM ‘Good’, but the design team, with the client’s support, sought to make the project BREEAM ‘Excellent’. Over time, the new library, will be monitored to assess and refine its performance in use.
A new energy centre will enable a move away from the current reliance on fossil fuels.
Ongoing phases of the masterplan currently involve the refurbishment and upgrading of Lambeth Palace. The physical state of the palace presented a number of challenges. Composed of buildings from different eras, spanning the 13th to the 19th centuries, the Grade I listed complex had languished for some time, necessitating a comprehensive programme of repair. Little had been done to the buildings since the Second World War, and the basic infrastructure for heating and electrics, which were found to be embedded in asbestos, were failing badly and required replacement.
Based on a fabric-first approach, upgrading the existing building fabric has been prioritised, reducing the energy required to heat and cool internal spaces. As with the British Museum, the creation of a new energy centre will enable a move away from current reliance on fossil fuels. Ultimately, the entire palace will be served by this energy centre, augmented by on-site renewables. Increased public access is a further long-term ambition, with works planned to the Great Hall, Guard Room, Chapel and Crypt Chapel to improve access to the palace’s historic core.
Through the sensitive transformation of existing spaces, rationalisation of services and careful choice of materials, each phase of development will be low in embodied carbon. The contractor was brought in early as part of a two-stage tender to partner with the design team. This allowed a complex set of site logistics to be resolved and planned around significant events, such as the ten-yearly Lambeth Conference, with 2000 guests. It also instilled the necessary resilience to plan around less predictable events, such as the royal funeral and coronation.
St John’s College, Oxford
Overlapping planes of masonry and glass provide high thermal mass while moderating light within the study centre.
Founded in 1555, St John’s is one of Oxford’s oldest and most influential colleges. It was said that you could walk from Oxford to London on land owned by St John’s. Wright & Wright worked with college president Maggie Snowling on her programme to broaden inclusion and physically rebalance the campus by attracting students back to its heart. For more than 40 years, St John’s had been looking for a way to extend its historic Laudian Library in Canterbury Quadrangle, a Grade I listed Baroque era ensemble.
Completed in 2019, the new study centre and archive finally resolved this conundrum. Housing the college’s world-class special collections and containing 120 reader desks, the new building creates an active connection between Canterbury Quad and the more modern elements of the college, strengthening links between different eras. The site in the president’s garden was chosen as it had the least impact on existing surroundings and landscape, while enabling library resources to be consolidated in a single location in strictly environmentally controlled conditions.
Conceived as series of overlapping planes of masonry and glass, the study centre resembles a stone casket, with a complex section and thick-skinned walls that sculpt and moderate light, giving each space a distinct character. The building incorporates a number of environmental control measures designed to reduce its energy consumption and fully offset the building’s carbon emissions to achieve a carbon neutral status. Heating is provided by water from 40 ground source boreholes excavated under the adjacent Great Lawn, and photovoltaic panels – which are either hidden discreetly behind parapets or integrated in the central monopitched roof – contribute to electricity generation. Basement archive stores are regulated by simple conservation heating and cooling, and fire protected by a gas suppression system. Combined with carefully considered detailing and finishing, this strategy is calculated to reduce running and maintenance costs over the long term.
An emphasis on natural light reduces the building’s energy consumption.
Other aspects of the St John’s masterplan focused on refurbishing the existing Old and Laudian libraries, by reinstating key historic and architectural elements, rationalising circulation, enhancing security, improving access and upgrading reader facilities. The final phase involved the replacement of the Bletchingdon marble columns in the 17th century Canterbury Quad. Once the new stone had been selected – Swaledale Fossil, a carboniferous limestone – the design process involved extensive laboratory testing for resistance to compression, weathering and frost, to achieve the reassurances that would satisfy the client, planners and Historic England.
Source: Architecture Today
