Example 29
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Student residences Hertfordshire, GB 2011
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Architects: Hawkins\Brown, London Assistants: Roger Hawkins, Oliver Milton, Julia Roberts (Project manager), Chloe Sharpe Structural engineers: Elliot Wood Partnership, London
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Just a 40-minute drive from London is a new student residence complex with 205 apartments on the rural campus of Hatfield Royal Veterinary College in Hertfordshire. Nine structurally identical point blocks containing student apartments are grouped in pairs around green courtyards and squares. The three and four-storey blocks, all with an eastwest orientation, are linked with each other by an open-design access core. An elongated building completes the complex with a restaurant and conference and shared spaces. The six rooms on each storey are equipped with prefabricated bathrooms and a shared kitchen. Every room has a bay window, whose slanting installation prevents direct views into the interior. Each window has an openable anodised aluminium ventilation grille on one side. A mixed structure consisting of prefabricated concrete slabs, load-bearing brick walls and a steel frame in the attic storey forms the core of the residences. Their projecting bay windows were built with the help of steel frames anchored to prefabricated concrete elements. The stairwell core’s load-bearing structure is made of steel beams and concrete slabs. In the plinth area, the facades of the clearly defined building cubes are built with brick facing masonry, while the upper storeys are timber-clad. This hybrid building envelope is a design element and also relieves the monolithic building’s bulk. The use of red cedar and Bronsgroen brick is a nod to the location’s history. While the original campus building was built completely in brick, the newer buildings are made mainly of timber. Its planners worked together with an artist to create the perforated bronze-coloured aluminium cladding of the prefabricated stairwells, which coloured light transforms into oversized lanterns at night.
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