The Royal Holloway University of London’s (RHUL) Boiler House site provides performance space for students and theatre professionals. The project involved the careful integration of a new build café building for up to 75 diners into existing historic boiler house and kitchens as well as the refurbishment of other existing rooms to provide café support space.
Along with assessing a number of options for servicing the new space, we worked closely with architects Cartwright Pickard to deliver a lighting solution which emphasised and enhanced the features of the historic boiler house chimneys, creating a striking aesthetic impact. We also reviewed a number of low carbon and renewable technologies and developed a low carbon solution comprising a combination of natural ventilation, thermal mass and Ground Source Heat Pumps (GSHP) using closed loop boreholes for heating in winter / cooling in summer, significantly reducing the energy footprint of the complex.
