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Iconic London tower awarded BREEAM Excellent |
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12 Jan 2010, 4:58 PM
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A new addition to the London skyline, the impressively tall and slender Heron Tower has been awarded green building status. Heron International, the power behind the tower, has announced that their new building has been awarded a BREEAM rating of Excellent. The innovators describe the Heron Tower as a 'visionary and environmentally focused development'.
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The building is placed in the City of London, aiming to provide world class office space, setting the standards for offices of the future. It is on track for completion in 2011 and the 46 storey tower will be the City’s tallest at 202 metres (663 feet) in height with a 30 metre mast. It is located on an island site in Bishopsgate, in the heart of the City of London.
The Heron Tower is convenient for public transport links, being situated a mere 200 metres from Liverpool Street, one of the biggest commuter stations in London. It has a number of special features such as photovoltaic cells to generate renewable electricity which contributes to the overall power requirements of the building which also help to create a solar shield and triple skin glazed facades to reduce heat gain by 45% over a standard glazing solution.
Commenting on the award, Steven Evans, Development Director for Heron Tower, said:
“Heron Tower’s beauty is not just skin deep. Our focus has been on developing a building which will be one of the most advanced buildings in the world, setting a global benchmark for quality in commercial office space.
“Environmental issues are increasingly high on the corporate agenda and sustainability has become a central factor in building design. Heron Tower has met this challenge head on employing a variety of environmentally conscious strategies. We are delighted to have achieved a BREEAM rating of Excellent.”
BREEAM addresses wide-ranging environmental and sustainability issues and enables developers and designers to prove the environmental credentials of their buildings to planners and clients. The assessment covers: management, energy, transport, health and well being, water, materials and waste, land use, site ecological value and pollution.
Heron Tower was designed by architects Kohn Pedersen Fox and is being built by construction partners Skanska. The assessment was conducted by Foreman Roberts and detailed the performance of Heron Tower against the BREEAM Offices 2006 criteria.
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| Positive review of this story |
Toern RIBA  |
7 Jul 2011, 9:14 PM |
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Fails to acknowledge twin crises of climate change and peak oil HERON TOWER - NON-SUSTAINABILITY
While acknowledging this building is trying harder than many London office buildings to be sustainable with an “Excellent BREEAM” rating, part shading from solar gain, and a small % of electricity provided by PV. This building is a disastrous and short sighted step backwards in UK species survival, in relation to Peak Oil, and Climate Change.
It is basically trying to continue with “business as usual”, with slight improvements in fossil fuel use and carbon emissions. It is carrying on with a huge additional energy use in the workplace, despite all the warnings from UN Scientists:- that we have to make urgent and thorough changes to cut our fossil fuel use, and cut our carbon emissions.
(see:- UN IPCC report agreed by several thousand scientists, from dozens of countries, 2007)
From the Heron developers specifications (approximate calculations):-
They have made provision for using a million kwhours per annum of electricity for small power and lighting, at 37 watts per square meter. This does not include the air conditioning and heating loads, say another 3million = 4 million kwhours of electricity for 300 sq meters of office.
The world has run out of cheap oil and gas, and electricity prices will now aonly spiral upwards quicker and quicker now, as demand escalates beyond posssible supply.
Despite our labour, and conservative/libdem admininistrations saying we are cutting our carbon emissions, this is totally untrue. Because their calculations do NOT include airplane and ship emissions, and exporting our production for our consumption, to Far East, and other cheap labour countries. Since the 2007 UN IPCC report, we have heavily increased our carbon emissions.
I conclude with a quote from US Dept of energy consultants report by R Hirsch 2005:-
PEAKING OF WORLD OIL ...IMPACTS, MITIGATION &RISK MANAGEMENT
This report has severe limitations, because it looks at how US industry and transport could carry on, business as usual, like the Heron Tower is today, without considering that this will destroy us with emissions causing catastrophic climate change. But sets the scene of what crises we are facing, and that we must act fast and thoroughly as the IPCC report recommended.
“There is no question that peaking is likely to occur in [2015-2020]. We”re in a very serious serious problem... Much worse than the worst that we could think of... the risks are beyond anything any of us have ever dealt with... The risks to our economies and civilisation is enormous ...This is really incredibly difficult, and incredibly severe problem.”
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