Sustainable design meets precision engineering

Jaguar Land Rover

Warwickshire, UK

Jaguar Land Rover, the UK’s largest car manufacturer and a brand recognised globally for quality and innovation, was looking to redevelop its existing facilities to establish a world-leading automotive centre in the heart of Warwickshire.

Once home to RAF Gaydon, the site has an impressive engineering legacy, but its layout and many buildings were ill-equipped to meet the needs of a brand at the forefront of vehicle design.

Buro Happold worked alongside Bennetts Associates Architects to deliver this major redevelopment project. At its heart stands the new Advanced Product Creation Centre, home to a state-of-the-art design studio for Jaguar as well as 35,000m² of additional high-quality office space to meet the needs of a workforce that has grown from 6,000 to 10,000 employees. Designed to encourage dynamic working practices and enhance the health and wellbeing of employees, this building sets a new standard in workplace design.

Challenge

Jaguar Land Rover had a vision to create a highly sustainable, interconnected development that would reflect the brand both now and in the future. As well as delivering the new Advanced Product Creation Centre with its ambitious sustainability goals, we had to connect to the existing assets, and in doing so seamlessly integrate old and new across the site. This included forging major transport, utility, infrastructure and landscape works.

Due to the complexity of the project, the initial stage comprised a three-month consultation period with Jaguar Land Rover to formulate the vision and brief. Environmental performance was a key driver, as was creating a collaborative working environment that encouraged interaction through visual transparency, links across the site, ease of access and adaptability.

Solution

Taking the time to understand our client’s needs, and then working together to formulate the brief, enabled us to respond with the design for a new building that would not just house people, but also inspire them. Working closely with the architect, we developed a masterplan for the site that situated the Advanced Product Creation Centre building at its heart, and internalised large areas of poorly performing and leaky 1990s facade to form internal streets and courtyards around it.

The streets are naturally ventilated and semi-conditioned using underfloor heating to provide a buffer space between the internal environment and the windswept ex-airfield outside. To promote interaction between teams and encourage movement around the building, the design provides as much openness on the ground floor as possible. The design seeks to remove physical barriers and doors, other than to spaces with particular security or acoustic requirements. This openness creates challenges around the acoustics and servicing strategy particularly in such open spaces, but the result is an internal environment which is stimulating and energetic, yet remarkably comfortable.

Crowned by one of Europe’s largest timber roofs, the challenge for our teams was to engineer this span without losing the intimacy of the individual spaces. The engineered timber roof makes a bold design statement covering an area of over 23,500². The 27m roof span grid, split into 10.5m bays provides a unifying element and reinforces the interconnectedness of the various spaces. As well as giving warmth, the timber materiality expresses sustainability and the oversailing rooflights flood the interior with natural light.

The light weight and low carbon properties of engineered timber are further employed in the plane of the roof deck. Cross laminated timber (CLT) spans the 3m spaces between glulam beams.

The choice of materials impacts the building’s overall embodied carbon. The 18,000m² of 140mm-thick CLT, together with the 6,000m of 680x240mm GL28c glulam beams, can be considered to have sequestered more than 1,500 tonnes of atmospheric carbon dioxide while the trees that provided the timber were growing.

The theme of connectivity continues inside the buildings, where open plan interiors provide clear visual links across departments. Our building services and lighting specialists looked to enhance this interactive environment with efficient yet low energy strategies.

Multiple atria and roof lights, as well as the internal streets, flood the interior with natural light while clever analysis of the facade enabled shaded glazing to provide liberal views out. Transient spaces are only lightly conditioned, buffering the environment between the offices and the outside. Within the office areas, a high proportion of fresh air is supplied through floor plenums to ensure good indoor air quality. A thermally activated building system (TABS) makes use of the inherent thermal capacity of the building to provide heating and cooling.

Our designs looked to integrate engineering and architecture across the site in ways that celebrated both. In many areas, services distribution was left exposed, as were steel connections and concrete soffits. A series of engineered timber rooves were provided over the whole building across three distinct levels, integrating both ETFE and glazed rooflights and supporting a large photovoltaic array.

Buro Happold’s commitment to sustainable design has been clear throughout the design process of Gaydon Triangle, our new Advanced Product Creation Centre. From employing innovative engineering and design, through to embedding renewable energy solutions, they have worked with us throughout the development of the scheme and have consistently shown energy and commitment in ensuring they have understood our needs as the client.

Chris Elliott, Property Director, Jaguar Land Rover

Value

Working closely with Jaguar Land Rover and its stakeholders revealed a parallel in our commitment to design integration across disciplines. Using BIM, Revit and other computational tools, we were able to synchronise our work with every member of the project team – from developing signature designs with the architect, to working closely with the contractor to facilitate off site manufacture of numerous components.

As well as streamlining both the design and construction process across the site, these collaborative working practices enabled us to embed sustainable features throughout the project, resulting in a BREEAM Excellent rating. We are continuing to work with our client post-occupancy, providing consultancy around the operation of the building to drive forward ever-improving energy performance.

Throughout this project, Buro Happold has been a critical element in the design team that delivered a welcoming, integrated campus for Jaguar Land Rover. The Advanced Product Creation Centre is a place where engineers and designers can interact, and disciplines work side-by-side to promote cooperation and spark inspiration. Once again, the Gaydon site is a fitting home for a British icon, providing a world-class working environment that will attract and retain the finest engineers in the automotive industry.

Even now, more than a year after we have gone into operation, Buro Happold has continued to support us to ensure that the building is enabled to optimise performance and minimise energy use into the future.

Chris Elliott, Property Director, Jaguar Land Rover