The Spirella Building
Architype worked with the Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation to deliver a decarbonisation study that would provide a roadmap to decarbonisation through retrofit of their Grade II listed Spirella Building.
Location
Letchworth, UK
Area
Status
Design
Year
2024
Client
Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation
Our team’s approach was to ‘start from a position of knowledge’. This meant becoming very familiar with the Spirella Building, its owner, trustees and current tenants to understand its history, past and present.
Vision
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Design
Thorough review of existing information including meter readings and commissioning new testing, analysing building performance data and building models for analysis. This, combined with tenant surveying, helped us understand how the building was being used, what its main problems are and what the report needed to tackle.
Three potential strategies were formed:
Strategy A: Light touch improvements, maximising on-site renewables and taking minimal intervention to building fabric.
Strategy B: Light retrofit in an approach that gives equal weighting to improvements to building fabric and on-site renewables, bringing the operational energy down first. Improvements to the thermal envelope of the building and more efficient M&E services without relying on extensive on-site renewables.
Strategy C: A deep green retrofit. Ground Source Heat Pump alongside a variety of fabric interventions to reduce overall carbon as close to zero as possible before the need for on-site renewables and carbon offsetting.
Risks and opportunities were highlighted for each. Through this, our client was able to decide which opportunities would be best, where the ‘quick wins’ were, and which options would present best value - bolstered by data from our cost consultant.
Expertise
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