rcadia Nursery, designed by Malcolm Fraser Architects, brings together two existing University of Edinburgh nursery facilities, into a single, purpose-built complex. The new building provides early-years education for over 100 children aged from six weeks to five years and has been designed to facilitate a ‘free-play’ concept, whilst ensuring the children are safe and easily supervised. It was conceived as a free-flowing series of interconnected spaces that could be opened-up or closed-off to suit the activities of the day.
The focus is not solely on creating one playroom per age group, but a series of additional spaces – such as shared ‘messy’ and art rooms, a children’s kitchen, raised cosy mezzanine spaces for quieter times, and a music and reading room. These are all connected at the heart of the building with a flexible welcome and circulation space, used for many functions including dining and coat storage. Externally, each age group’s playroom is clearly identifiable as a welcoming, domestic – but also contemporary – form, creating a sense of belonging and ownership for each age group.
Trapezoidal roof forms
These three pavilions are then linked together by a single-storey building, with large rooflight views to the tree canopy above. The desire to respect the facade of the adjacent protected Joseph Black chemistry building led to a more compact footprint, with raised mezzanines for the children and a first floor area for offices, staff and a family room. The different trapezoidal roof forms of the pavilions reflect the varied internal spaces.
The outdoor space is considered as another ‘playroom’ for the nursery, with it being used every day by all age groups to encourage physical activity and engagement with nature. The ‘enclosed’ garden is directly accessed from the nursery building, leading, via a secure gate, to a ‘journey’ through the trees, then to more adventurous play facilities for the older children and finally to a space where the grass is allowed to grow long, meadow flowers flourish, birds and insects are watched and earth mounds provide activity for even the youngest children.
The architects selected copper producer Aurubis’ Nordic Royal alloy for roofs and some facades because of its warm and friendly persona, so crucial to a nursery setting. Having used bronze on other projects, the designers felt that this would become too dark, whereas Nordic Royal will stay light, both in terms of the colour and visual weight, sitting well alongside the timber cladding. Double lock, standing seam joints were used to give structure to the pitched roofs but the copper alloy wall cladding is installed with a reverse coulisseau joint, avoiding projections that children might catch themselves on at low level.
Nordic Royal is an alloy of copper with aluminium and zinc, and is very stable, keeping its golden shade over time. It behaves differently to pure copper, with a thin protective oxide layer containing all three alloy elements when produced. As a result, the surface retains its golden colour indefinitely and simply loses some of its sheen as the oxide layer thickens with exposure to the elements, with a matt appearance, as demonstrated by accelerated weathering tests.
As well as exuding a sense of visual richness and quality, the golden alloy offers outstanding mechanical abrasion resistance, extremely high corrosion resistance and durability as well as excellent stability and material rigidity. The material can be easily cold-shaped and processed using standard techniques.
Highly sustainable
Along with a requirement to achieve a BREEAM Excellent rating, the client was keen from the outset to create a highly sustainable building. We also felt the building’s use leant itself as an educational tool in its own right, to teach children about the varying aspects of approaching life in a sustainable manner. It was also of foremost importance that a healthy, calm environment was created for the children. The cross-laminated timber structure provided the perfect combination of creating a warm, tactile interior, whilst also using a natural, sustainable product that could structurally achieve the clear roof volumes required to ensure the mezzanines spaces were not compromised.
The specification of all materials was carefully considered. Materials were chosen that are renewable, have low embodied energy and a minimal carbon footprint – criteria that the copper alloy easily met – whilst also creating a vapour-open, breathable building fabric with high air-tightness. This ensured that a high indoor air quality was achieved by minimising or eliminating products that emit low-level toxicity. The design stage BREEAM assessment achieved a high score of 82.2%, with material and pollution sections achieving a 100% score.
The BRE ‘Green Guide to Specification’ is useful for assessing the sustainability of architectural materials and provides independent endorsement of the low environmental impact of both copper roofing and cladding. It rates a wide range of complete building elements from ‘A+’ to ‘E’, using Life Cycle Assessment techniques. Ratings form an important part of BREEAM and credits are available for using specifications for key building elements (e.g. external walls and roofs) with low embodied environmental impact.
Extreme durability
Various complete wall or roof build-ups are considered, each including materials for structure, insulation, moisture control and finishes. All the copper-finished roofs and most copper wall cladding specifications included achieved A+ or A summary ratings. Even the few build-ups with lower ratings could be improved easily with replacement components, without affecting the copper skin itself. Copper’s longevity is a major strength, resulting from its complex patination process that ensures extreme durability with no maintenance and resistance to corrosion in virtually any atmospheric conditions. It is also important to remember that 100% of architectural copper products are manufactured from recycled raw material.
