Client Skainos Centre
Location Belfast, UK
Architect d-on Architects
Value £17m
Fortifying an important community space in Belfast with low energy building services and a BREEAM 'Excellent' award
About the project
The Skainos Project is a 12,000m2 community based development consisting of 3 to 4 storey residential, community and commercial units on a brownfield site located centrally in Belfast. The project provides social and affordable housing, community and healthcare facilities, a new church, third-level education, retail and commercial space, a day nursery and café.
Community areas comprise auditorium which will serve as the worshipping space, offices accommodation, a café with kitchen, family centre, and community hall, facilities for Age Concern and Northern Ireland Association for Mental Health (NIAMH), in addition to an auditorium and educational facilities for Belfast Metropolitan College.
IN2 was responsible for the design of the complete low energy building services systems as well as the Theatre performance installations and were appointed as BREEAM and EPC assessors, for which the project achieved BREEAM “excellent”. Due to the multi-use nature of the development IN2 worked with the multiple stakeholders representing the various organisations involved in the project. The project was constructed on a brown field site and arranged around a new urban village which seeks to “provide shared space for community transformation and renewal”. There are adjacent streets, roof gardens and community gardens and a sculpted ‘rain garden’ that functions as a sustainable urban drainage system.
The purpose of the rain garden is to ensure that rainwater becomes available for plants as groundwater rather than being sent through stormwater drains. Incoming water percolates through a series of soil or gravel layers beneath the surface plantings. Rain gardens can cut down on the amount of pollution reaching nearby streams by up to 30%.
The building features a 500 sq m ‘Green Wall’, which was the first of its kind in Ireland. This wall is completely covered with vegetation and includes a growing medium (soil). The plants forming the Green Wall help reduce overall temperatures of the building.
The primary cause of heat build-up in cities is insolation, the absorption of solar radiation by roads and buildings in the city and the storage of this heat in the building material and its subsequent re radiation. Plant surfaces however, as a result of transpiration, do not rise more than 4–5 °C above the ambient and are sometimes cooler.
The project won RICS 2013 Project of the Year and was highly commended in Regeneration awards and the RITP & RSPB 2013 Sustainable Communities & Regeneration Category, Northern Ireland Sustainable Planning Awards.
