Building ControlNEWS

www.rbkc.gov.uk/buildingcontrol

Issue 9 - 2010

A Building Transformed

Open Plan Layouts and Sprinklers - Are they safe enough?

Holland Park School Redevelopment - the video story

Contents

OPEN PLAN LAYOUTS WITH SPRINKLERS

page 6

Cover picture: Parkland Court - Jim Garland Architects Ltd.

3 JOTTINGS By John Jackson

4 PARKLAND COURT By Jim Garland

6 MEANS OF ESCAPE Open plan layouts with sprinklers By Paul Hanson

7 SHOWCASE: Redevelopment of Holland Park School on Youtube

8 VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM The Medieval and Renaissance Galleries By MUMA

10 NAME THE TOOL (Quiz)

11 THE SPECIALISTS

12 A SMOKE ALARM IS ONLY A WARNING

12 CONTACTS

Building Control Department,The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, The Town Hall, Hornton Street, London W8 7NXTel: 020 7361 3838 Fax: 020 7361 3820 email: building.control@rbkc.gov.ukWeb site: www.rbkc.gov.uk/buildingcontrolEditor: Paul HansonAssistant: Jago Williams

If you have any comments or suggestions regarding this or future issues of Building Control NEWS, please write to:The Editor, Building Control NEWS by email, fax or letter

The opinions expressed in this magazine are those of the individual authors, and do not necessarily reflect Council policy

PARKLAND COURT A building transformed

page 4

HOLLAND PARK SCHOOLon Youtube

page 7

VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM The Medieval and Renaissance Galleries

page 8

RBKC Building Control NEWS 3

JOTTINGS - John JacksonWelcome to the ninth edition of Building Control News.

In the last newsletter I informed you of some departmental changes. Well here I am again writing about another change.

Richard Stanhope, a long serving member of staff who led the area team dealing with the north of the Borough, has left after 30 years service. Many of you have no doubt worked with Richard in the past and I know he will be missed by both clients and colleagues. Following Richard’s departure the Department has moved to two area teams, bringing us into line with Planning. The two teams will operate north and south of the Cromwell Road, with the exception of the area around the museums that will be in the south team.

Team Managed by

Telephone

South Garry Sharp

020 7361 3830

North José Anon 020 7361 3803

If you experience any difficulties brought about by this change then please contact the team managers.

New Approved Document Parts L, F and J came into force on the 1st October reflecting the continual efforts to reduce carbon emissions from buildings. This has had a

consequential effect on Part J regarding permanent ventilation openings to open flued appliances.

Continuing with the theme of change, a new charges scheme became operational on 1st October. This gives local authority building control greater flexibility in setting their charges and tendering for work. The aim of the scheme is to ensure full recovery of the cost of providing the building control function. In most cases our charges will be reduced however there are a few that have been increased to reflect the work undertaken by the Department.

With all this change taking place it is nice to highlight a bit of stability. I am therefore pleased to inform you that we remain one of the top performing Inner London authorities as measured by the London District Surveyors Association. I therefore take this opportunity to thank all my colleagues for the positive contribution they make to achieve and maintain this high level of performance.

I am also pleased that two of our entrants in the LABC Building Excellence Awards 2010 were well received. 4 Pitt Street, a single family house by the developers Hill Spink Ltd, featured in our last newsletter,

won the One-Off House Category and the Medieval and Renaissance Gallery at the Victoria and Albert Museum, designed by Muma, was highly commended in the Community Building Category.

We have recently been appointed to provide the building control service for three large projects in the borough. These include; Charles House mixed use development, with two storeys of underground car parking; Wornington Green social housing redevelopment; and the redevelopment of the De Vere Gardens island site. In addition two practices, Hill Spink and Thomas Croft, have teamed up with us under the Partner Authority Scheme to provide them with a plan checking service for any project in England and Wales. If you are also interested in teaming up with us then give John Allen a call on 020 7361 3802.

As always, if you have any comment you wish to make on the service you receive then please let me know.

I can be contacted on 020 7361 3822 or email:- john.jackson@rbkc.gov.uk

4 RBKC Building Control NEWS

Parkland Court

Demolish and rebuild, or refurbish? Until very recently the Government’s Building Schools for the Future investment programme, and Housing Market Renewal Pathfinder program for new housing, have been prime examples of the former, where the arguments in favour of demolition invariably centre on the buildings’ poor thermal efficiency, fire safety and access for disabled users.

Such arguments could equally have been applied to Parkland Court, a late 1950’s five storey building located in Holland Park. Fire escape was courtesy of a single communal staircase, external walls lacked any insulation, and the communal lift was at the end of its life and so small to be of limited

value, particularly with regard to disabled access.

In short, the building was overdue for a makeover, and Pirton Ltd, a developer specialising in imaginative roof top extensions, was invited to submit proposals. Having previously designed a number of projects for Pirton, Jim Garland Architects and Peter Brett Associates were appointed to undertake the architectural and engineering design, and came up with a scheme to extend upwards by a further 2 storeys. The amount of development was determined by the immediate planning context and also the maximum load which could be added to the buildings existing foundations without the need for

underpinning.

The proposals addressed the poor thermal performance by over cladding the existing external walls with a ‘Sto’ 50mm insulated render system, an approach which not only transformed the U values of this element, but also avoided a visual break between the original building and the new steel frame construction above.

The sub standard access and cramped communal areas were resolved by the addition of a new 10 person lift serving all floors and placed outside of the buildings original footprint. This gave three benefits. Firstly, the lift would be structurally separated from the existing building thus avoiding noise

WORDS: Jim Garland PHOTOGRAPHS: Provided by the Developer

Images: Left: The transformed building

Below: As existing

Right: The kitchen and dining area with city view from the penthouse

Bottom right: The living space

RBKC Building Control NEWS 5

transmission into the existing apartments. Secondly, the cramped communal stair which wrapped around the original lift could be transformed into a spacious open stair, and thirdly, the new lift tower could be used as a compositional device to the front street elevation.

Fire safety was perhaps the most demanding condition to resolve. The existing internal layouts precluded the addition of a secondary escape staircase, and therefore alternative fire engineering options were explored, initially concentrating on the possibility of pressurising the main stair. RBKC Building Control were approached at an early stage and were sympathetic to the problems faced in upgrading a substandard building to current standards.

Dave Gammon, RBKC’s fire safety officer suggested an alternative strategy, whereby the new lift was designed to act as an alternative means of escape, and mechanical smoke extraction was added to the communal stair, with appropriate compartmentation of the upper floors. In this way, the new apartments would be fully compliant with current standards, and the fire safety to the existing flats vastly

improved.

Construction was completed last summer, and externally has changed the building beyond recognition. Interior Design of the new apartments and external landscaping was undertaken in conjunction with Robert Grace Architects, and the finished product very well received by residents and neighbours alike.

Developer Pirton Limited www.pirtonltd.com

Architect Jim Garland Architects Ltd www.garland.org.uk

Engineer Peter Brett Associates www.peterbrett.com

Interior Robert Grace ArchitectsDesign www.robert-grace.com

6 RBKC Building Control NEWS

Open plan layouts with sprinklers - are they safe?

Inner Bedroom

Exit door from dwellingIn recent years there has been

an increasing desire for open plan layouts in flats and houses. In issue 4 of Building Control NEWS we considered research on the use of sprinklers and determined that safe conditions for escape (tenability) could not be guaranteed in all but one of the scenarios tested (a bed fire).

A recent publication by the National House Building Council (NHBC) has suggested in certain limited scenarios, a sprinkler controlled fire with smoke detection would be no worse than a conventional design with a protected route. This is based upon a computer analysis of open plan designs compared to the current standard (from Approved Document B) using a protected hallway with fire doors which residents close at night. Part of this consideration was to consider the affect of occupants leaving their fire doors open based upon a survey which revealed that 60% of those surveyed left the doors to their hallways open at night.

The comparison is therefore based open the fire doors being left open 60% of the time. On this basis the risk analysis concludes that the open plan design protected with sprinklers would be better than an ADB

design.

However the prime question is whether this is an appropriate criteria for assessing a safe design as the success of the ADB design is based upon occupant closing their doors at night.

The NHBC report therefore shows a sprinkler/smoke detection system is only as good as a protected route with doors closed at least 40% of the time. This does not seem to provide an acceptable means of escape.

A more robust solution would be for a suppression system which maintains tenability (heat and smoke toxicity and visibility levels) for the time needed for occupants to escape. This would probably need to be a re-engineered sprinkler or water mist system which is able to activate at a growth stage in the fire where the toxicity has not reached untenable levels. Now

is there a suppression system designer who would like to meet that challenge?

A more detailed consideration of the NHBC report can be viewed from the following link:-

www.rbkc.gov.uk/subsites/buildingcontrol/firesafety.aspx

RBKC have created a computer simulation of a sprinkler controlled fire in an open plan situation. This is not meant to be a detailed study of the use of sprinklers in all open plan scenarios and types of fire; it considers a sofa fire and assumes polyurethane foam is burning. An ADB compliant protected hall with closed fire doors would protect occupants from this situation. Watch the video and consider for yourself whether sprinklers provide a safe escape.

www.youtube.com/user/RBKCBuildingControl

WORDS and ILLUSTRATIONS: Paul HansonMeans of escape

RBKC Building Control NEWS 7

SHOWCASERedevelopment of Holland Park School

on Youtube

An exciting new initiative has seen Building Control produce a short video about the project to build the new Holland Park School.

The film includes clips of the Architect, Peter Runacres of Aedas Architects Ltd; John Allen (explaining the involvement of Building Control); and the presenter Helen Cochrane of the Royal Borough.

Further productions are planned showing interesting stages throughout the construction process with the aid of some of the pupils from the school.

The video can be seen on RBKC’s Youtube Channel at:-http://www.rbkc.gov.uk/subsites/buildingcontrol/communityprojects.aspx

8 RBKC Building Control NEWS

MEDIEVAL & RENAISSANCE GALLERIESVICTORIA & ALBERT MUSEUM

The V&A’s Medieval and Renaissance collection is unrivalled in its range and quality. Our new galleries take full advantage of both the diversity of the collection and the outstanding aesthetic worth of the individual pieces.

The setting for these galleries had always been severely compromised by poor circulation and lack of access. To address this we have created a new build intervention occupying a pivotal location, which not only provides access to the new Medieval and Renaissance Galleries but also resolves the wider public circulation in this quarter of the museum. In doing so we took advantage of previously unexploited space within lightwells to create a new daylit gallery containing new vertical circulation to six levels.

This new gallery is an informal top-lit space, contained between the existing external facades with a couple of ‘gap sites’ ideal for housing large architectural fragments such as the 16th Century timber facade of Sir Paul Pindar’s house.

There is an inherent dynamic quality to this incidental volume; the contrast and spatial tension between the powerful curved form of the East Hall and the adjacent rectilinear blocks providing an opportunity for an abstract modern intervention; translucent glass beams, up to 9m long, are arrayed across the space, with the reconciliation of the slightly rotated cubic forms of the surrounding buildings with the pure semi circle of the apse to Gallery 50, creating a delicate undulating roof.

Around this new space the

original Aston Webb galleries are reinstated, augmented by a series of new connections with neighbouring gallery spaces. Here we respect and clarify the historical context by recovering the scale, proportion and rhythm of the existing sequence of galleries to create an appropriate, calm and elegant setting for the collection.

Within this context we use the artefacts themselves to structure space, establishing and reinforcing the curatorial narrative. Significant artefacts are positioned at key

WORDS: MUMA - McInnes Usher McKnight Architects

RBKC Building Control NEWS 9

architectural points, framed by existing vistas and glimpsed through new openings. In this way, the collection itself is utilised to draw visitors through the progression of spaces in such a way that the exhibition as a whole becomes more intelligible.

The spatial rhythm of the galleries is further reinforced by the use of contrasting light levels and colour, helping to sustain interest, create a sense of anticipation and thus avoid visitor fatigue. The composition creates spaces for rest and contemplation.

Although almost all of the galleries contain light sensitive artefacts, all the galleries are daylit, with light levels ranging from controlled shafts of sun, through diffuse daylight, to controlled, filtered daylight. In one instance, in the ‘Gallery of Devotion and Display’, daylight is filtered through a series of translucent structural onyx screens - an abstract interpretation of the use of translucent stone windows in medieval ecclesiastical architecture; here providing a serene and beautiful backdrop for the display of 13th Century artefacts.

MUMA - McInnes Usher McKnight Architects.www.muma.co.uk

PHOTOGRAPHS: by Alan Williams

10 RBKC Building Control NEWS

The answers appear on our web site: http://www.rbkc.gov.uk/subsites/buildingcontrol/mediaandpublications.aspx

Name the Tool

A

B

C

D

E

F

What is the name and use of the tools photographed?

What specific sector of the building industry do they all represent?

Structure ● John Jackson020 7361 3822john.jackson@rbkc.gov.uk

Fire safety ● Dave Gammondave.gammon@rbkc.gov.uk 020 7361 3816● Paul Hanson0207-361-3819 paul.hanson@rbkc.gov.ukSite preparation and resistance to contaminates and moisture● Alan de Souza0207-361-3809alan.desouza@rbkc.gov.ukResistance to the passage of sound● John Allen020 7361 3802john.allen@rbkc.gov.uk

Ventilation● Garry Sharp020 7361 3830garry.sharp@rbkc.gov.uk

Hygiene● Richard Beddoe020 7361 3805richard.beddoe@rbkc.gov.uk● Michael Winn020 7361 3836mick.winn@rbkc.gov.uk

Combustion appliances and fuel storage systems● José Anon020 7361 3803jose.anon@rbkc.gov.uk

Protection from falling collision and impact ● José Anon020 7361 3803jose.anon@rbkc.gov.uk

Conservation of fuel and power● John Allen020 7361 3802john.allen@rbkc.gov.uk

Access to and Use of Buildings● John Jackson020 7361 3822john.jackson@rbkc.gov.uk

Glazing ● José Anon020 7361 3803jose.anon@rbkc.gov.uk

THE SPECIALISTS

A

C

B

G

F

E

H

K

J

P

N

M

L

Electrical safety ● Garry Sharp020 7361 3830garry.sharp@rbkc.gov.uk

Drainage and waste disposal● Richard Beddoe020 7361 3805richard.beddoe@rbkc.gov.uk● Michael Winn020 7361 3836mick.winn@rbkc.gov.uk

Regulations ● John Jackson020 7361 3822john.jackson@rbkc.gov.uk

Regs

A smoke alarm is only a warning...

Recent changes to the Building Regulations have relaxed the need for self closing devices to be fitted to certain fire resisting doors in new buildings consisting of houses and flats.

However self closers are still required to flat entrance doors and the door to an integral garage.Stairs and hallways in houses and flats are designed as protected escape routes and are vitally important in the event of a fire.

At night when you are asleep you are at a greater risk of being overcome from the effects of toxic smoke and fire.

Therefore it is essential that doors to rooms that contain any potential fire risk are closed at night.

Additionally halls and stairways should be provided with a suitable smoke detector to give you the earliest possible warning of a fire to alert you to escape.

BE SAFE - CLOSE YOUR DOORS AT NIGHT

Illustr

ation

: Pau

l Han

son

BUILDING CONTROLGeneral Enquiries 020-7361-3838

Building Control Department,The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, The Town Hall, Hornton Street, London W8 7NXTel: 020 7361 3838 Fax: 020 7361 3820 email: Building.control@rbkc.gov.uk

Dangerous Structure out of hours 020-7937-3000(after 5:00pm)

PLANNING

General Information 020-7361-3012Listed Buildings 020-7361-3352Arboriculture 020-7361-2767Disabled Access to Buildings 020-7361-3382

CONTACTSHIGHWAYSGeneral Information 020-7361-3001Sewer Connections / Blockages 020-7361-3001Street Lighting 020-7361-3001Defective Roads and Walkways 020-7361-3001Permits (Scaffolding /Hoardings) 020-7361-3001Skip Licences / ParkinG 020-7361-3001

ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH General Information 020-7361-3002Waste management 020-7361-3001Licensing and Entertainment 020-7341-5152Noise Nuisance 020-7361-3002

OTHER USEFUL NUMBERS Health and Safety Executive 020-7556-2100Thames Water 0845-9200-888English Heritage 020-7973-3000Westminster 020-7641-6000Hammersmith and Fulham 020-8748-3020