The Crystal, a highly polished, multi-faceted, steeply-angled urban sustainability centre, showcases what is possible by itself meeting the highest BREEAM and LEED standards. Powered entirely by electricity – as stipulated by the client, electronic and electrical engineering giant Siemens – this aims to be a true building of the future. Andy Pearson reports
Siemens’ Crystal building in London’s Royal Victoria Docks is claimed to be “the world’s first centre dedicated to improving our knowledge of urban sustainability”. It hosts the world’s largest public exhibition on the future of cities and includes a 270-seat conference centre, research and office space and a restaurant, café and shop. The building itself has been designed to be part of the sustainable experience and is claimed to be “one of the most sustainable buildings in the world”. According to Siemens it is the first building in the world to achieve both BREEAM (Outstanding) and LEED (Platinum) accreditation.
Description
Wilkinson Eyre Architects’ design for the £30 million building is based on two crystalline parallelograms merged into a single faceted building. One half houses the exhibition space, the other is for corporate activities.
The 18m high building’s futuristic appearance helps drive home Siemens’ message that technology will play an increasingly important role in creating a sustainable global future. “Although it is an exhibition building, it does encompass emerging technologies such as black-water recycling, that are international and not UK focused,” says Jonathan Ward, associate director at Arup.
A key stipulation in the electronic and electrical engineering company’s brief for the 3,500 m2 building was that it must run exclusively on electricity. As a result, photovoltaic panels (with Siemens inverters of course) cover two-thirds of the Crystal’s 45m wide, 88m long roof. The solar PVs generate around 20% of the building’s electrical demand; the remaining 80% of its energy needs come from green electricity via the grid.
The solar thermal panels will also supply the energy to heat the water for use in the restaurant kitchen and toilets.
The faceted and angled walls that give the building its distinctive geometric appearance are highly insulated to minimise energy demand. They also allow large areas of glazing to be placed strategically in the façade. In some areas the glazing is used to harvest solar heat, in others the angles of the façade helps minimise solar gain while allowing daylight to flood the building. Most spaces have enough daylight not to need artificial light during the day, but when it is required, the colour and brightness of the building’s LED lamps is automatically adjusted according to the time of day and occupancy.
Siemens’ stipulation that the building was all-electric ruled out the use of a gas boiler. Instead, it is warmed by a heat pump using geothermal energy. In winter, the closed-loop system will heat the building and condition the fresh air supply using heat drawn from pipes cast into the building’s 160, 21m deep piles and an adjacent field of 36 piles, each 150m deep. In summer, heat is pumped back underground, cooling the building while recharging the ground for the next heating season.
A mixed-mode ventilation strategy is used to cool and ventilate the building. This is designed to provide fresh air to both the office and exhibition spaces using motorised vents in the facades and roof. Given that this is a Siemens’ building, it will come as no surprise to hear that it incorporates a state-of-the-art building management system (BMS). This is programmed to maximise the use of natural ventilation in summer (as far as is possible beneath the flight path for London City Airport), and to minimise the need for cooling. There is also a conventional chiller for back-up should the spaces get too warm. In winter the building will be mechanically ventilated and heated.
As well as controlling the ventilation, the state-of-the-art building management system allows the environmental systems to be managed from anywhere in the world. The system can control everything from a single light fitting to managing the amount of electricity the building draws from the electricity grid.
There is also a proposal to install a giant battery at some time in the future to enable the building to store electrical energy. This will help balance electrical loads and supply, and will enable the building to intelligently control when power is taken from the grid or exported as surplus.
Key features
- The all-electric building is designed to meet both BREEAM Outstanding and LEED Platinum criteria.
- Rainwater is harvested and treated for use as drinking water using Siemens technology. In addition, the Crystal uses water efficient appliances – low water-use taps and sanitary fittings; and there is a mains water connection for those rare occasions when there is insufficient rain.
- A Siemens black water recycling plant will reuse 100% of the water from the building (including that used to flush toilets) to ensure nothing is wasted. The treated water will be used once again to flush toilets and for irrigating the surrounding landscape.
- Electric car charging points in the car park use surplus energy from the Crystal’s PV array.
- The building is surrounded by drought-tolerant landscaping and planting to reduce irrigation demand.
- A sustainable urban drainage system will minimise rainwater discharge to the local sewer and prevent excessive run-off into the adjacent dock.
Outcomes
For the office space, the Crystal is designed to use on average 83kWh/m2/year which Siemens says is better than 50% less energy than comparable office buildings.
Once the renewable energy produced on site is taken into account, emissions are expected to average 23kg of CO2/m2/year, which Siemens claims is 65% lower than in comparable office buildings based on the UK electricity grid mix.
In addition, the building includes a giant live display wall in the exhibition space to show:
- percentage of the electricity provided by the solar panels consumed so far today
- kWh of electricity consumed so far today
- kWh of heat generated so far today by the ground source heat pump
- kWh of cooling generated by the ground source heat pump
- kWh of heat generated by the solar thermal system
- litres of water that have been consumed so far today
- Percentage of the water provided by the black water recycling system consumed so far today
Learning points
The building has been designed as a living experiment. Much of the learning will come from its use. For example, energy in the Crystal is extensively monitored so that every kilowatt of electricity used for heating and cooling, and every litre of water consumed and generated, can be measured from inside the building and related to the performance of other buildings across the world to compare efficiencies.
As Grid electricity is de-carbonised by wind and nuclear – the concept of all electric buildings will become more mainstream and the technologies installed in this building become more common.
“The electric ground source heat pump gave us a slight benefit in terms of carbon intensity when compared to gas boilers,” says Mark Plummer, a building services engineer with Arup.
“Two extra bores holes have been drilled into the ground so the University of Southampton can carry out detailed studies on both the ground source geothermal system and the surrounding ground under different conditions.
Project Team
Architect: Wilkinson Eyre Architects
Interior designer: Pringle Brandon
Structural and services engineer: Arup
Project and cost manager: Turner & Townsend
Contractor: ISG
Exhibition consultants: Event Communications