CASE STUDY | CAMBRIDGE CENTRAL MOSQUE Cambridges elegant new mosque has comfort and sustainability at its heart thanks to the involvement of the environmental engineer at the projects inception. Andy Pearson looks at how Skelly & Couchs creative design worked with the grand scale of the prayer hall to provide natural ventilation and daylighting for more than 1,000 worshippers COOL TO PRAYER T The prayer hall has space for 1,000 worshippers he Cambridge Central Mosque has been badged by the media as Europes first eco-mosque and the greenest mosque in Europe. Its easy to see why: the building is designed to be naturally lit during the day and naturally ventilated throughout the year, while its visually impressive timber columns helped minimise embodied energy in the buildings structure. Perhaps more impressively, its ecocredentials did not result from a detailed sustainability brief from the client they are simply the result of good engineering. There was no defined eco-brief as such; we work with Marks Barfield Architects a lot and we always strive to develop sustainable solutions, says Mark Maidment, director of the projects building services engineer Skelly & Couch. The mosque, which opened its doors to worshippers in May, is certainly impressive. It comprises a long, mainly single-storey building that occupies a rectangular site in a predominantly residential area of Cambridge. Visitors enter the building after passing through a formal garden with trees and a water feature facing onto the busy Mill Road. They then pass beneath a giant entrance canopy supported on four tree-like timber columns, each of which is lit from above by a large, glazed oculus, before entering through a row of glass doors set into a glazed faade. Inside, visitors are greeted by a large day-lit atrium featuring four more timber piers, off which doors lead to a cafe on one side of the space and an educational area on the other. From this space they pass through a lobby housing the toilets and wash areas for ritual ablutions. After this, visitors enter the most important space of all the giant 30m by 30m prayer hall, with its 8m-high roof supported on a forest of timber columns, which has space for up to 1,000 worshippers. The circular timber supports are the spaces most striking feature. Each is formed from a ring of perpendicular ribs, which open outwards, branch-like, as they rise upwards from the worshippers to form an intricate ribbed timber vault that supports the roof. As with the entrance canopy, each tree is lit from above by a large, circular roof light. The roof lights ensure a light level ofapproximately 150-200 lux is maintained within the prayer hall. We did not want direct sunlight in the space, so the roof lightshaveadeep reveal, says Maidment. Our daylight studies show that there is no need for artificial lighting in any of the 24 August 2019 www.cibsejournal.com CIBSE Aug19 pp24-28 Cambridge mosque.indd 24 19/07/2019 15:02