Monodraught tailors SunCatchers for new building at Nottingham University
Monodraught has supplied four bespoke SunCatcher units to provide daylight and natural ventilation for the Sir Colin Campbell Building, the latest phase of Make Architects’ plan for the extension to Nottingham University’s Jubilee Campus. The building straddles Triumph Road, which links the university campus to the west with the science-based innovation park. The building contains business-incubation units for spin-off businesses associated with the university and exhibition space to showcase their work.
The SunCatchers bring daylight into the entrance atrium of the 3-storey building and replace the originally planned glass rooflights.
James Goodfellow of Make explains, ‘Glass rooflights originally proposed to light the atrium area and extract air presented significant problems with solar gain and glare, as well as cleaning and maintenance. But as we had previously worked with Monodraught to install SunPipes in Dartford Judo Club — a training centre for Britain’s 2012 Olympic judo teams — we began quite early in the development to explore the possibilities offered by Monodraught’s natural-lighting and ventilation systems using the same successful design criteria that we used at Dartford Judo Club with a very special scalloped ceilgin feature.’
Among the benefits of using SunCatchers at Nottingham are the elimination of glare, solar gain and cleaning and maintenance.
The units for the Nottingham project have 1.5 m-diameter domes are and installed in pairs in two specially designed housings. The ceilings in the building are concrete to maximise thermal mass, so special double-curved formwork was created to achieve a seamless transition from the soffit to the base of the SunCatchers into the ceiling feature.
The natural-ventilation section of the SunCatchers can cool the atrium overnight, and motorised dampers are linked to the fire-alarm system to enable firemen to control smoke clearance in the event of a fire.
