;
;
Located at the main entrance to University College Cork, the Lewis Glucksman Gallery is an award-winning building that includes display spaces, lecture facilities, a riverside restaurant and gallery shop.
Opened in October 2004, the building is an architectural masterpiece that has been very sensitively etched into the natural surroundings of the River Lee. Arup carried out the electrical and mechanical engineering. Taking just over four years to procure, this project includes 2,350m2 of floor area spread over seven floors.
In designing the building services, we pushed the boundaries of available technologies in our aspiration to minimise the environmental impact of a demanding brief. Local natural resources are used to provide energy for cooling and heating the building.
Project Summary
2,350m² of floor area
75%reduction in conventional energy consumption
250tonnesof CO2 emissions saved per year
Considered engineering solutions for maximum aesthetic impact
The electrical services were built on the architect’s vision for the building. Careful consideration was given to the aesthetics of the electrical services and a functional and flexible lighting control system was designed for the gallery areas.
All systems were designed to minimise noise intrusion to the gallery space. This results in larger, low velocity, duct distribution systems and acoustic attenuation, including the use of specially lined drainage systems. A ground source heat pump system was installed to provide a sustainable source of heating and cooling. Post occupancy monitoring validated the innovative design solutions, whereby 75% of conventional energy consumption was saved. This resulted in an annual saving of 250 tonnes of CO2 emissions.
The Glucksman Gallery is purpose-built and equipped with state of the art facilities, such as international curatorial standard environmental conditions and security controls.
This unusual building with demanding environmental control requirements was designed with high efficiency heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, coupled to a geothermal energy transfer system. The final HVAC systems installed use a combination of displacement ventilation, a groundwater sourced system for heat transfer and a novel plant arrangement to enable simultaneous heating and cooling from the one heat pump.
