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Passive reaches new heights at UCD student halls E-mail
Passive Housing
Wednesday, 01 February 2012

UCD
The winner of the sustainability award at the 2011 Irish Architecture awards, Roebuck Castle student residence at UCD’s Belfield campus is also the biggest certified passive house project built to date in Ireland and the UK. Tony Rigg of Kavanagh Tuite Architects explains how such a significant building achieved passive results.
The design process
Serving 300 students, Roebuck Hall student residence was designed by Kavanagh Tuite and completed in 2006. For its time, it was an energy efficient building relative to then current regulations. Six storeys high, the external walls were formed of structural concrete, cast with permanent magnesite board formwork which required only decoration for final finish. The windows were fixed on the external face of the concrete, and air-sealed to the concrete. The walls were then insulated with 60mm rigid foil-faced polyurethene boards, and faced with a brick skin supported on stainless steel angle supports at each floor level. This gave an effective airtight construction, reasonably well insulated, and an economical construction solution.

When design started on Roebuck Castle residence in 2008, in establishing the brief with UCD, it was decided to raise the standard and aim for an exemplary green project.  Passive house was subsequently adopted as the reference standard.

In choosing a façade material, the architects decided to exclude materials more associated with commercial buildings, such as metal panelling, and ultimately settled on Trespa Meteon cladding for the rainscreen finish. Casement windows throughout the building are Lang Fenster triple-glazed aluminium-clad timber units, certified by the Passive House Institute
In choosing a façade material, the architects decided to exclude materials more associated with commercial buildings, such as metal panelling, and ultimately settled on Trespa Meteon cladding for the rainscreen finish. Casement windows throughout the building are Lang Fenster triple-glazed aluminium-clad timber units, certified by the Passive House Institute

Located adjacent to the first phase, the project was also to be six floors high. We examined the practical and aesthetic implications of designing to a much higher energy performance standard, and the greatly increased thickness of insulation required for this type and scale of building structure. While adjacent to the brick-clad Roebuck Hall, it quickly became apparent that it was not economically feasible to support a six-storey brick-clad façade through the 200mm plus thickness of insulation required to achieve the ambitious thermal performance levels needed for passive house. This would have required a secondary six-storey independent structure to support the heavyweight brickwork cladding.

Super-insulated pre-cast concrete panels were examined, but were found to be neither technically feasible nor economic; GRC faced panels were not competitive in the Irish market, so we proposed a lightweight insulated framed wall panel with rainscreen cladding.

At six-storeys high, the latest phase of Roebuck Hall will be home to hundreds of UCD students
At six-storeys high, the latest phase of Roebuck Hall will be home to hundreds of UCD students

As a university residence, we excluded façade materials more related to commercial building, such as metal panelling. Terracotta, while attractive, proved too costly. After examining several external board alternatives, Trespa Meteon was selected as the preferred rainscreen finish. This could be applied on both the externally insulated concrete walls, and on the lightweight metal-framed structural wall panels. 

This process of design, through exploration of practical available options to achieve a new and different standard of building construction and performance, influenced and informed the whole detail design process, and the final aesthetic quality of the building.



 

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