Location: Earth Centre, Doncaster, South Yorkshire
Client: Taylor Woodrow
Description: Earth sheltered conference building with breakout rooms
Value: £2.2M
Awards: Civic Trust Award
Start / Completion: Summer 2000 - January 2002
Notes:

The winners of a design competition - working with Taylor Woodrow and Arup, ZEDfactory realised an earth sheltered conference facility with multi-purpose space and breakout rooms on hillside land reclaimed from the mining industry. The foundations have been formed into an insulated concrete tank that when filled with water heated by solar thermal panels, enables the building to store warmth from the summer to heat the building in winter. The main conference hall sits above the water tank on a carpet of insulation with its ceiling inclined towards south to provide a mounting position for the solar hot water panels. A wood burning stove in the foyer can be used to top up the temperature in the tank if required, over the winter months. Gabion cages filled with local reclaimed concrete waste form the superstructure, combine with reclaimed local steelwork and many other products to give the building its distinctive look and feel with 85%+ recycled materials throughout. The first generation wind cowls were developed for the scheme and many of the building physics elements subsequently used at BedZED such as thermal mass and solar orientation.