What have The Beatles, Adele and a Blackpool engineering company got in common? The new home of Universal Music, and a standard of excellence.
In the heart of London, BAM Construction has constructed the Grade A office building on behalf of Argent LLP, Four Pancras Square. The building utilises state-of-the-art technology to achieve a BREEAM outstanding rating across its 170,000sq ft over ten floors. Apart from the retail units at ground level, the whole building is let to Universal Music.
As part of its BREEAM target, the building includes passive ventilation. Gilberts provided a bespoke special grille solution to meet the aesthetic and functional requirements.
Approximately 250 metres of 755mm and 680mm linear grilles have been incorporated externally around the full building perimeter, with a similar quantity of 215mm wide grilles on the inside providing ventilation.
Innovatively, the ventilation grilles have been bespoke-engineered to deliver multi-purpose usage: Gilberts has mitred the corners of the grilles to acute, obtuse and right-angle requirements to fit the form of the building. The grilles have also been provided with special notches where required to fit the building structure and services, along with having specially placed plates within the grilles with holes to accept CCTV, footfall and landlord cameras along with Wi-Fi bracketry to enable discreet housing of these additional ancillaries.
Explained Gilberts’ Technical Director Roy Jones, “Four Pancras Square was a challenging prospect as the key was the aesthetic appearance and combined services, along with the scale of the required functional grilles. We worked closely with BAM to develop solutions that helped them incorporate all the building services required, as seamlessly as possible. Uniquely, we have the capability, in-house, to design, manufacture, and test, our products, therefore we were able to design and fabricate a solution that integrated into the façade, and could further accommodate additional equipment with minimal visual evidence.”
Gilberts’ grilles are just part of the company’s range of grilles, louvres and diffusers for natural and mechanical ventilation. Founded 55 years ago, Gilberts Blackpool is Britain’s leading independent air movement specialist, and is unique in its ability to develop components. Be it ‘mainstream’ or bespoke – entirely in-house, from initial design through tooling, production, testing and supply, at its 85,000 ft2 manufacturing facility. Its state of the art test centre, designed and built in-house, is one of the most technically advanced in the country.