Jessops West, Sheffield

Today I'll take a quick look at a worlds first acoustically sealed yet naturally ventilated building in Sheffield, Jessops West.  The building houses the English, History and Languages for the University of Sheffield.  While there are lots of interesting features to this building, today I'm going to focus on the double skin west facade.

This facade faces onto to the very busy section of the ring road and the university roundabout.  Naturally ventilating a building in such a loud environment hadn't been done before.

The solution ARUP, the services engineers came up with is elegant and simple while also integrating perfectly with the structural and facade systems. Each office in the west facade can manually open windows on the inside skin of the double glazed facade.


Fresh air is then drawn in through the vents in the cavity below the window.  The cavity has an 'acoustic labyrinth' inside which prevents acoustic infiltration into the room.  This system has preformed better than expected and the inside of the building is surprisingly quiet when a window is open.

At the top of the open window, hot stale air is naturally drawn out into the cavity and up a thermal flue running the full height of the building.  Negative pressures at the top of the thermal flue and a natural stack effect help draw air out.

Manually controlled blinds in the windows also allow the occupant to regulate the amount of solar light and heat entering the room.  Solar heat trapped in the cavity by the blinds is naturally drawn up the thermal flue.  This very simple and well integrated design completely negates the need for air conditioning in a location, that, because of the busy road, would normally have required it. 

The system also gives users control of their environment and access to fresh air while they're working.  This is sure to improve their satisfaction
levels with the building and thus their work quality.



The facade system and size of windows changes as it wraps around this many sided building, responding to the natural light,heat and acoustic levels.  This optimisation helps simplify the construction and prevent inappropriate ventilation.

In summary, Jessop west is a simple but beautiful piece of engineering design which could be easily reused in other similar buildings.  It's predicted CO2 emissions are only 40% of a typical office building.