Make Architects has won approval for an 12-story office block in New Bailey, Salford, featuring a living façade.
The building contains 10,600 square meters of office space, as well as ground-floor retail, and is part of the £1 billion (US$1.3 billion) Salford master plan being developed by The English Cities Fund – a joint venture between Legal & General, Muse Developments and Homes England.
According to the developer, the office will have net zero operational carbon, with the living wall removing air pollutants such as carbon and reducing urban temperatures while also offering thermal benefits to occupiers and improving the area’s biodiversity.
The fossil-fuel-free building will also be run solely on “100 percent good-quality renewable electricity” and the team has committed to the new NABERS UK rating scheme to measure the scheme’s operational performance as well as being on target to achieve a BREEAM Outstanding rating.
The LETI pioneer project will also include recycled steel “for reinforcement” and “50 percent cement replacement for the substructure and 30 percent cement replacement for the superstructure.”
This, the architect claims, has resulted in a reduction of the upfront embodied carbon intensity from 1,100kgCO2/m2 for a typical development of this type down to 770kgCO2/m2.
Describing how the green façade will be built, Make architect Stuart Fraser said: ‘We have used a highly insulated window and wall façade system, with an average 60 percent solid to 40 percent glazing, formed from a structured pattern of thick vertical and horizontal bands that wrap around the building.
“We’ve then applied an ivy veil with a mix of trailing and climbing plants, almost acting as a camouflage to the building as a whole. The species of ivy has been carefully selected for its hardiness and seasonal appearance.”
He added: “This living wall will absorb and filter the pollution and carbon in the atmosphere, enhance biodiversity, attenuate rainwater, reduce noise and provide biophilic benefits for the health and well-being of the users.”
In 2016, AHR was given outline permission for a 33-story glazed residential building containing 236 flats on the same vacant plot, but the developer has since decided to build a lower-rise office building instead.
The English Cities Fund’s projects director Phil Marsden said: “Despite the unprecedented times we find ourselves in, we’re still seeing a demand for high-quality office space that not only provides an agile environment in which to work from and promotes colleague well-being, but also spaces that are climate-resilient and adaptable to our changing world.”
The building will be the third that Make has delivered for English Cities Fund at New Bailey, with Plot 1 due to complete imminently for HMRC. Plot B7 was approved in 2020 and has recently started on site.
Other buildings in the New Bailey master plan include AHMM’s Two New Bailey and Riverside House, as well as RHWL’s One Bailey.
For more on this story, go to Architects’ Journal.