Mabgate Yard

Leeds, UK

Mabgate Yard was once home to Hope Foundry, which began life in 1812, when Samuel Lawson set up a textile production company in this corner of inner-city Leeds.

By the middle of the century, the company’s products were nationally renowned, recognised with a Council Medal at the Great Exhibition in 1851.

In recent years Mabgate has developed to become one of Leeds’ creative heartlands and a focus for regeneration. The Mabgate Yard site, currently occupied by low-level warehouses, has long been ripe for regeneration.

Mabgate Yard in Leeds is to be reimagined as a mixed-use redevelopment, with architectural aesthetics that echo the site’s historic mill building typologies.

Buro Happold provided expert consultancy around MEP, acoustics, fire and wind engineering to help inform the planning process and maximise opportunities.

The energy strategy for the developer follows the theme of “Lean, Clean, Green”.

Our acoustics experts provided detailed studies into potential considerations around noise levels from two nearby nightclubs.

Challenge

Architect Cunniff has designed a complex of brick residential buildings that blend into the urban environment and do not compete with the architectural presence of the historic Hope House or the Grade II-listed Foundry Entrance.

Buro Happold was engaged by Henry Boot Developments to provide expert consultancy on building services engineering (MEP) for the new scheme, alongside acoustics, fire engineering and sustainability and physics input with the requirement for a series of wind engineering studies on the new design.

A public consultation was launched in January 2022 for a residential-led mixed use development with 310 high-quality studio, one, two and three-bedroom apartments, 350m² of commercial space, as well as communal, co-working and creative space.

Located on a key gateway site, close to St James’s University Hospital and the city centre, each of the high-specification apartments will be available solely for rent, offering real choice to key workers and those traditionally left behind by the rental market.

To achieve outline planning permission, our experts worked with the wider design team to create a utilities and energy strategy for the site, including planning the spaces for the plant and infrastructure. This was carefully considered to fully optimise the commercial scope for the site.

Solution

We generated a range of energy strategy options that are viable for the proposed development, with all stated options meeting both regulatory and local authority compliance requirements.

The project design follows the energy theme of “Lean, Clean, Green”. This strategy aims to minimise energy consumption from the outset with low energy, passive measures and efficient systems before the deployment of low and zero-carbon technologies. Our experts also produced an analysis of how and where solar photovoltaic (PV) panels could be incorporated to provide generation of onsite renewables.

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modelling was used to ensure the proposed alignment of the buildings provided robust protection against a wind tunnelling effect from prevailing winds, as well as achieving the architectural vision to design a massing of buildings and roofscapes that echoed the “mill” typologies of the historic site.

Our acoustics experts provided detailed studies into potential considerations around noise levels from two nearby nightclubs and advised around ways these may be mitigated against. We produced a 3D acoustic model, to visualise the calibrated noise surveys undertaken and to show the relative impacts on different parts of the site. This allows mitigation measures to be rationalised, reducing potential intervention costs for the project.

Cheyne Capital acquired the site in 2023 and are now working with the design team – including Cunniff and Buro Happold – to prepare a Reserved Matters planning application.

Value

This key mixed-use development will play a critical role in the wider regeneration of the Mabgate area of Leeds and provide much-needed high quality rental accommodation on the outskirts of the city centre.

Our multidisciplinary team provided detailed studies around critical elements of the design to help inform the hybrid planning application, fully satisfying the planning requirements while giving the developer as much future flexibility as possible and developing solutions that will enhance the lives of future residents while avoiding unnecessary cost for the developer.