Near Zero workplace building 2007

New offices and touchdown facilities for BP global business

As Sustainability Director at Broadway Malyan Architects, I acted as Project Architect for a prototype near zero office building for BP’s campus at Sunbury-on-Thames which was intended to act as a flagship for the company’s move ‘beyond petroleum’ into renewable energy.  I worked with a co-located multi-disciplinary team to develop the brief and detailed building fabric and energy/ environmental strategy using the aquifer and embedded coils to generate through heat pumps heat and coolth for comfortable office conditions.  Although BP’s property strategy changed subsequently so that they ceased development and switched to leasing, the proposed evolution from their previous fully glazed model typology was radical – carparking was minimised below ground, landscaping context maximised, roof area for PV maximised by abandoning air conditioning units; using the atrium for air mixing as well as the steady state thermal mass combined with 40% maximum glazing.