Overbury project scoops top spot at BREEAM awards

The judges commented that they were "impressed with the take on overall wellbeing, as well as embracing the challenge of refurbishing an existing building. The efforts made on solar shading, biodiversity and accessibility were also highly rated".

Overbury was tasked with carrying out the full refurbishment of the Knight's Park Campus, which houses the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture. In addition to architect's Haworth Tompkins, we also worked with project managers Turner & Townsend and quantity surveyors Rider Levett Bucknall on this project.

Haworth Tompkins said; "One of the drivers of the project has been to demonstrate how a carefully considered retrofit can transform the environmental performance, functionality and design quality of existing university buildings, so it is encouraging to see a refurbishment project achieve this award.

Universities are faced with the twin challenges of meeting their zero carbon goals while addressing new ways of working and teaching in the post-pandemic era. This retrofit shows how these challenges can be addressed while also delivering high-quality design and without the need to fully decant staff and students off site to undertake major demolition and rebuilding.

Our upgrades for Kingston School of Art prioritised passive design measures, increasing north-light to studios through re-organising the internal layout, introducing solar shading to the South, upgrading the thermal performance/airtightness of the envelope and replacing inefficient building services and plant. Together this package of measures contributed to achieving BREEAM Outstanding while also delivering on-going energy cost savings and significant reductions in CO2 for the university.”