Student Housing

 

Glyndwr University

 

Wrexham, Wales

 

Shortlisted RIBA competition entry - link

 

There are three elements to our design; Low blocks, high blocks and landscape. Both the low blocks and high blocks contain student accommodation, with one of the blocks housing the hub functions. The landscape helps to knit together the existing student accommodation with the new to create a homogenous public realm.

 

The layout of the site offers a great opportunity to use the orientation of the buildings to generate their appearance based upon the movement of the sun. The facades facing south will be designed with horizontal brise soleil creating a low level horizontal appearance. The upper blocks with its facades facing east / west will have a vertical appearance as the sun shading for this orientation needs to be vertical. The upper block is positioned to provide shading to the larger windows where the lounge areas are located in the lower blocks.

 

The roofs of the lower blocks provide a green space to circulate and enjoy as part of the accommodation. Located next to the sports pitches these roofs could provide a very good space for viewing matches.

 

The hub building is located on the main street to engage the visitor in the more public activities such as refectory and café. With more glass this building provides a dramatic point of arrival on the site. The landscape between the hub building and the adjacent accommodation will house the refectory hall which again enjoys views over the sports fields.

 

A low energy building will be provided by carefully considering the construction method, air tightness of facades and internal fit out design to use natural ventilation, minimum second trades to shorten the construction programme as well as using state of the art technology to provide hot water, shared launderette to minimize water use, concrete structure to provide high thermal mass to minimize heat gain in summer.