WELL STANDARD | 22 BISHOPSGATE Core fitness As well as being the tallest building in the City of London, 22 Bishopsgate is the first major UK project to pursue Well Core and Shell Certification. AndyPearson speaks to building services engineer WSP about the challenge of aiming high T wentytwo, located at 22 Bishopsgate in the City of London, is billed as a new type of skyscraper a vertical village accommodating office and social spaces, including a wellness centre, spa, yoga suite, gym, climbing wall, a dentist, restaurants and retail space. Itisalso the first major UK building to pursue Well Core and Shell Certification (individual tenants can decide whether they want to pursue Well Certification on their individual floors). When it opens in October, the 62-storey tower, developed by Lipton Rogers Developments with AXA Investment Managers, will house up to 13,000 villagers in 118,000m2 of office space. Construction of the giant concrete core is complete and work at the top of the tower is now focused on finishing the final sections of its steel frame, which will support the roof-top plantrooms, a public viewing gallery and several restaurants. At the foot of the tower, the first of the office floors, Level 6, is complete and fit-out teams are now racing up the building. Being the first major project to aim for Well Core and Shell Certification was not without its challenges. Since we started work on achieving Well, the document has been revised, so our experience may no longer be valid, says Richard Brailsford, project mechanical lead engineer at WSP, the projects building services engineer. With the exception of the upper levels, all office floors have a 3-metre floor-to-ceiling height, and the buildings perimeter is formed of full-height glazing to maximise views out. This consists of low-iron glass to let in more daylight. According to Peter Rogers, from Lipton Rogers Developments: Weve pushed the wellness aspect of this scheme; were trying to get as much daylight as we can into the building, so wedidnt want solartinted glass, which turns everything grey. All 50 office floors will be to Cat A standard; essentially, the mechanical and electrical services and suspended ceiling will be installed. Its a herculean task that involves the installation of more than 3,000, four-pipe fan coil units (FCUs) before the towers expected completion at the end of the year. Fresh air for the offices isducted via constant-volume boxes to the back of the FCUs. Well Certification is predicated on US or ISO standards. Wed designed the ventilation rate to CIBSE codes and British Council for Offices [BCO] recommendation of 1.5L.s-1 per m2 of floor, which was not recognised by Well, so proving compliance involved an annoying amount of additional work, says Brailsford. Another challenge was in designing the control system to ensure the temperature in the offices conformed to Well criteria. To meet BCO comfort conditions, the offices are cooled to 22C +/-2C. Well says that is too cold in the middle of summer and that the space is over-cooled. To comply with Well, office temperatures have to 16 June 2019 www.cibsejournal.com CIBSE Jun19 pp16-17 Bishopsgate Supp.indd 16 24/05/2019 14:43