CASE STUDY | ST JOHNS COLLEGE, OXFORD, LIBRARY AND STUDY CENTRE ONE FOR THE ARCHIVES Max Fordhams design for the library and study centre at St Johns College, Oxford, is a worthy winner of the CIBSE Champion of Champions title. Andy Pearson looks at an all-electric services design that provides comfort while targeting net zero emissions S t Johns College, Oxford, was founded in 1555, but while it can look a long way back into its history, the design brief for its new library, study centre and archive building was only ever forward-looking. Ten years ago, the college asked designers to explore the options for a carbon-neutral building that would impinge as lightly as possible on the environment and on the colleges existing historic structures. The completed scheme, designed by engineers Max Fordham and Wright & Wright Architects, opened its doors in autumn 2019. A year later, energy measurements showed the scheme was close to achieving the colleges carbonneutral aspirations, with measured carbon emissions of just 18 tonnes of CO2 per year (11kgCO2.m-2 per year). The judges at this years CIBSE Building Performance Awards recognised this achievement, with the scheme winning Project of the Year Public Use and the Champion of Champions award. Max Fordham was also named Building Performance Consultancy (51-300 employees) of the Year. The judges praised the St Johns College scheme for its forward-looking consideration of carbon-neutral strategies before it had become common to do so. In 2012, the concept of developing a carbonneutral building was so progressive that Max Fordham had to establish precisely what the college meant by carbon neutral before it started to develop the building services design. We helped to define carbon neutral, which in this context meant you could not offset the carbon emissions from this building outside of the St Johns College campus, says Scott Rushford, principal engineer at Max Fordham. The consultants approach to targeting a carbon-neutral solution was to develop a design based on maximising the use of passive measures, such as natural ventilation and daylighting, which it then combined with an all-electric building services solution. At the outset, it was the passive measures that had to be addressed by the design team, because the buildings form and window placement were constrained by its location. The library and study centre is discreetly located at the rear of the college presidents garden, adjacent to a 17thcentury wall, to minimise its impact on historic quadrangles. Behind its cream-coloured Clipsham limestone exterior, the threestorey building houses a reading room, with space for 120 students, a seminar and group study area, and a secure basement archive to house the colleges precious manuscripts. The reading rooms have views eastwards over the wall to the Great Lawn, while clerestory glazing and glazed rooflights provide views skywards, helping flood the space with natural light. There are no views to the west, over the presidents garden, to preserve privacy; instead, the buildings west elevation steps out in a series of overlapping planes that incorporate a sculpture by Susanna Heron. Tall windows hidden between the planes allow daylight to enter the reading room from the north and south, a feature exploited by the lighting design (see panel, Space to reflect). As a low carbon building, you want good levels of daylight, so we worked with the architect to extend the walls outwards on the west faade to enable south and north-facing glazing to be positioned behind the extended walls, explains Rushford. Susanna Herons sculpture on the west elevation overlooks the Great Lawn, beneath which are the GSHPs PROJECT TEAM M&E, acoustics and lighting design consultant: Max Fordham Architect: Wright & Wright Client: St Johns College, University of Oxford Structural engineer: Price & Myers Quantity surveyor: Peter Gittens and Associates Contractor: Stepnell M&E contractor: Lowe & Oliver BMS contractor: PA Collacott 20 April 2022 www.cibsejournal.com CIBSE Apr 22 pp20-22, 24 St Johns College.indd 20 25/03/2022 17:33