McBains Cooper has received the Silver Award in the Roses Design Awards 2009 in the Best Public Building category for the design of North Kent Police Station.
These prestigious national Awards recognises and rewards the achievements in the best architectural designed projects outside of London.
The same project has also been shortlisted in The Kent Design Awards and the winner will be announced in April next year.
The Kent Design Awards celebrate excellence in design and construction and represents the
best in design throughout Kent.
The £30m PFI police station in the Thames Gateway, Kent was completed last
year.
The 11,500m², four-storey landmark building includes 40 cells, conference rooms, restaurants, separate public and custody entrances and a new crime scene investigation garage.
The scheme features a number of ‘green’ technologies, including an innovative geothermal heating and cooling solution, reducing the building’s carbon footprint by 32 tonnes and making great energy savings.
“The new building offers a professional environment, supporting the evolving police process,” said Keith Young, Director at McBains Cooper who provided architecture, interior design, services engineering, cost management and planning supervision to the scheme.
Keith continued, “McBains Cooper’s aim was to create a striking, environmentally sustainable building, providing officers and staff with state-of-the-art facilities, enabling them to deliver the best possible service to the public.”
The key feature of the building is the 80 metre long central atrium known as the ‘Street’. The building also comprises a two-storey custody block and a four-storey, 80m X 15m glazed office block.
‘The ‘Street’ separates the office block and custody block and provides a circulation and socialisation hub,’ Keith said.
The use of a strong linear pattern is prominent throughout the building and the driving force behind the design philosophy. It is reflected in the site layout, the building footprint and in every element of the finished envelope.
The linear pattern is also extended to the exterior of the building: the main entrance and rear garden being extensions of the internal ‘Street’.
This strong axis line is picked up in the paved boulevard leading to the front entrance which is lined on both sides with walls and planters in the same polished concrete as the custody block. At the rear, a tree lined paved area extends the axis further, creating an overall internal and external ‘street ‘ almost 200 m long.
The building is heated and cooled using a ground source heat pump system. The system circulates water through pipes which have been embedded in the structural concrete piles. These are further supplemented by remote geothermal piles located in the car park that extend to a depth of approximately 100m. The geothermal system will achieve at least 30% in overall energy savings, equating to around £18,000 per year.
Solar shading is provided to the southerly façade by means of brise soliel. The biggest area of glazing faces north which provides consistent external light and temperature to the offices.
The flat roof is being used for collecting rainwater for use in flushing the office block toilets.
The consortium working on the project includes Justice Support Services North Kent Ltd, comprising Reliance Secure Task Management, Bank of Scotland Corporate and the Kier Project Investment Ltd.
This is McBains Cooper’s fifth successful police PFI project with Reliance including the award-winning Gloucestershire Police Headquarters building.
Glenn Howells Architects were invited to work with McBains Cooper from conception stages and were responsible for the concept design of the external envelope. |
