NewVIc Newham Sixth Form

Elementa Consulting has completed phase 1 re-development of London’s largest sixth form college, NewVIc Sixth Form. The project was focused on creating a thriving learning community to enhance the student experience. Phase 1 consisted of a new build modern library, learning resources center, and entrance block to improve the college’s visibility, accessibility, and overall attractiveness. The latest development also provides a flexible performance space and visitor facilities, including a café and exhibition space. Located in East London, the improved campus allows the college to fulfill its aim of providing top-quality facilities and education to help progress students onto highly competitive universities.

As part of the early design evolution, Elementa Consulting undertook thermal simulation of a wide range of strategies to be considered in isolation and together, this identified that beneficial passive solar gains were outweighed by the risk of overheating (or increase in cooling required) and managing heat gains was of paramount importance. From this, several optimizations were developed – a conventional glazed atrium roof was replaced with a saw tooth north light configuration, vertical Briese-Soliel ‘blinkers’ were introduced to the east and west facing main facades to shade the windows from sun mid-morning to early afternoon while still allowing occupant views out / public views in. Through this optimization, cooling has been limited to small areas of the building (high load office space and the top floor ICT study spaces).

Owing to the location of the building on the busy Prince Regent Lane and associated high noise and pollution levels, natural ventilation has only been adopted on the quieter west façade facing away from the road. The remainder of the building is mechanically ventilated to each area, with warm return air naturally rising via the atrium space and extracted at the top to recover beneficial casual heat loads during the heating season.

Modern, efficient lighting (LED throughout) combined with energy-efficient lighting controls (occupancy detection or absence detection, depending on the use of the area, combined with perimeter daylight dimming) resulted in an attractive lighting design that is highly economical to run.

Heating is via a new modern condensing boiler system incorporating direct boiler weather compensation to maximize efficient condensing operation.

The building’s design exceeds the London Plan energy policy through a 24% reduction in emissions through passive and efficiency measures and a further 20.9% reduction through the rooftop mounted south-facing PV array.