PILKINGTON HELPS LEISURE, LIVING AND LEARNING COME TOGETHER IN HARMONY

04 March 2005
Epsom town centre is home to the Ebbisham Centre, an innovative millennium project bringing quality housing together with a library, leisure facilities and retail space. Both style and functionality have been brought to the project with the use of over 500m2 of Pilkington Architectural's structural glazing system, Pilkington Planar™, installed by CAP Aluminium Systems.

Epsom town centre is home to the Ebbisham Centre, an innovative millennium project bringing quality housing together with a library, leisure facilities and retail space. Both style and functionality have been brought to the project with the use of over 500m2 of Pilkington Architectural's structural glazing system, Pilkington Planar™, installed by CAP Aluminium Systems.

Architects for the Centre, RMJM, decided that the whole project should appear as simple and as uncluttered as possible and aimed to follow this through the whole design. This could have been a difficult undertaking with the comprehensive nature of the development, consisting of a library and lifestyle centre, doctors' surgery, apartments, retail units and two public squares. However, the finished design, making excellent and innovative use of large areas of Pilkington Planar™ glazing, has achieved exactly what the architects set out to do, creating a stunningly simple structure that both enhances and blends with the existing structures around it.

At the heart of the whole scheme is a double-height glazed concourse, 60m long, 8m wide and 8m high, that gives access to the library and lifestyle centre and an excellent outlook onto the new public square at the front. The façade of the concourse is made up of three layers of clear heat-soaked Pilkington Planar™ glass. The double-glazed inner layer comprises one 12mm pane, a 16mm cavity and a 6mm pane that forms the internal face of the concourse. The outer layer is 12mm thick.

With such a vast expanse of glass, it was also important that the concourse was designed in a way that would limit solar gain to ensure the comfort of occupants. RMJM wanted to naturally ventilate the space, so a double skin construction was designed, featuring a 700mm cavity between the façade and the inner glass wall to create a flue effect providing natural ventilation and cooling. Air is introduced through a grille at the bottom of the cavity and drawn up by convection to be released at the top through a series of louvres. The inner and outer skins are separated and supported by steel ladder trusses on a 2.5m grid.

To further enhance the glass concourse, RMJM wanted simple fixings that would not obscure the clear unbroken view provided by the glass concourse. They selected a standard Pilkington Planar™ stainless steel 901 and 902 bolt assembly attached to steel plates welded back to the steel trusses. Silicon was then used to seal the 2m high glass panels.

Further use was made of Pilkington glass for the roof light that facilitates the ventilation of the concourse via 11 polycarbonate louvres situated along its length. The rooflight consists of 6mm Pilkington toughened clear glass with a 12mm cavity and 6.4mm low-emmisivity Pilkington K Glass™.

The Ebbisham Centre is a public-private partnership between Epsom and Ewell Borough Council, Surrey County Council and the Trevor Osborne Property Group.