The new minister of education appointed a design team for the new Cork Regional Technical College. The formation of the design teams had taken place and O’Malley had set up Building Design Associates as the design team for regional technical colleges at Dundalk, Galway, Sligo and Waterford. The design was originated by a consortium formed as a design team which were hand picked by the Fianna Fail Minister of Education, Donogh O Malley in 1966/67 (Magill 04/88).
Here in Cork the design team differed with O Flynn Green Architects, Varmings, ARUP and James Sheehan.
The design has to be pulled together very fast so the design team visit Birmingham where ARUP have just completed the M&M Building. They replicate the structural design almost regimentally.
The M&M Building uses an innovative twin skin full height glazed envelope with natural ventilation between structures. Internally, the quality of the finishes exceeds that of its Irish counterparts.
The original structure comprises a two storey precast un-insulated concrete building, with an un-insulated 100mm castellated concrete roof panels and original 6mm clear single glazing with aluminium frames. The extent of the retrofit scope under this phase is limited to the first floor with south, west and north elevations.
Main Campus
The existing building is pre building regulations and has a very poor performing thermal envelope with a very high level of air infiltration and subsequent uncontrolled heat loss. Furthermore, the existing fabric has deteriorated since its 1974 completion date
and in particular its 30% glazing coverage has a thermal transmittance U-Value ofgreater than 5.5 W/m2K including frame
(300% worse than current building regulations recommended levels of performance).
Overall envelope design methodologies
- Limiting heat loss & high level of air tightness
- Reduce active mechanical
- Scalable in a modular
- Natural ventilation, occupancy control and use of the existing concrete massing.
Installation of solar panels on the roof : 24kWp
The virtual smart grid comprises the national grid, NBERT building, NBERT micro-grid and the CIT main campus building. The micro-grid powers the Zero2020 building while also exporting energy to the national grid.
Interior of the new building: Ventilation Control Strategy
The Control strategy for the ventilation system is largely based on the actuation of the high level automated insulated doors. The low level insulated doors are manually operated and their usage relies on the occupant perception of the internal environment.
