Mayville Community Centre – bere:architects

Mayville Community Centre

The Mayville Community Centre is set to become the first certified Passivhaus non-domestic retrofit in the UK and will help demonstrate how deep retrofit of existing buildings rather than demolition, is an achievable and viable solution for much of the UK’s existing building stock. Refurbishment has transformed this local authority owned, Victorian building, located within the deprived Mayville estate, into a community centre which will serve the future comfort needs of local residents while saving financial resources for key services.

See http://www.bere.co.uk/projects/mayville-community-centre-passivhaus-retrofit

Mayville Community Centre – pre retrofit

Prior to refurbishment, the actual primary energy demand of the building was 581kWh/(m2a), with an annual cost of £10,710. The proposed building was modelled using PHPP which predicted the new primary energy demand would be 127kWh/(m2a). Of this only 12kWh/(m2a will be used for space heating, at approximately £600 per annum. The existing and ‘as designed’ building was also modeled using SBEM, which calculated a designed Building Emissions Rate reduction of 87.5%. Collection of two years performance data via the Technology Strategy Board Building Performance Evaluation Programme aims to verify that this approach to retrofit is an achievable and relevant solution to enable the required energy reductions in existing buildings to be met.

Mayville is an innovative and model project setting the standard for future deep retrofit, not only greatly improving the building but demonstrating how this common building typology, a medium sized Victorian solid masonry building can be transformed to achieve energy consumption reductions to exceed current UK building regulation standards, the lesser passivhaus Enerfit standard (for refurbishment) and even the UK’s 2019 targets for non-domestic buildings demonstrating how refurbishment rather than demolition is a viable and replicable solution.

Justin Bere (bere:architects) collects 3R Award