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Lambeth Youth Centre | London
Located on the Waterloo Road, a stone’s throw from some of the capital’s most iconic landmarks, the London Borough of Lambeth’s new £1.4m Southbank Youth Centre provides the young people of Lambeth with vital educational facilities. The 600m2 steel frame building includes a number of environmentally friendly concepts including a sedum covered green roof, a recycled rainwater flushing system for the toilets and solar panels. The structure consists of a two-storey glass rotunda with a cyber café and drop-in-centre on the lower floor, whilst the upper floor contains offices and training/resource rooms made accessible to disabled users by lift.
Green Concepts incorporated within the building:
Solar Power - The system sized at 2KWp is predicted to generate 1,100kW per annum, with a CO2 saving calculated at 770kg per year. The power produced is fed directly in to the centre's distribution board and used by any load operating at the time of generation. The system comprises a large central rotunda roof light of 8x Saint-Gobain 40W polycrystalline glass laminates with an area of 16m2.
Rainwater Harvesting - The roof and terrace can collect 156,000 litres of rainwater a year, averaging 430 litres a day, stored below ground in an Eco-Vat GRP rainwater harvesting tank with an internal capacity of 20,000 litres. The Vat has a heat exchanger installed to provide cooled air for the sealed plenum during the summer period. Assuming a 40% reduction for the take up of the Green Roof, 94,000 litres of recycled rainwater is harvested for flushing toilets every year.
Green Roof - The roofs of the rotunda and the first floor are covered with a Sedum vegetation blanket, a water storage mineral wool drainage reservoir board and Eurotherm, CFC-free polyurethane insulation.
Plenum - The 300m deep void beneath the centre has been utilised for both sealed and unsealed supply air plenums. Fresh air is drawn in through wall mounted louvers on Coral Street, supplying both plenums. While the air is stored in the plenums, its airborne temperature is naturally reduced by 4 to 5 degrees, compared to the ambient temperature in the building.
The building houses Lambeth’s and Southwark’s newly revitalised youth services to explore innovative and flexible approaches to high quality training, employment and education in partnership with other providers to fight young people’s experience of social exclusion.
Architect LB of Lambeth Design & Technical Services
Structural Engineers Ellis & Moore
M&E Engineer Fulcrum Consulting
Main Contractor Kier
Contract Sum £1.4m