Nottingham City Council has given the green light for plans to deliver a new Art and Design building for Nottingham Trent University (NTU)
The new net zero building, designed by Hawkins\Brown, will enhance the link between Nottingham Trent University campus and the city.
Its lower-carbon design will support Nottingham Trent University’s ambition to deliver the building with net zero carbon emissions.
The building at 40–42 Shakespeare Street will deliver a variety of workspaces for designing, collaboration areas, specialist studios and labs, teaching rooms and public exhibition and a café space.
A whole-life net zero carbon university building
Combining traditional design practice with creative technologies, it will bring together film, animation, UX design, gaming design, graphic design and illustration courses, with dedicated spaces for visual communication, moving image and digital screen arts disciplines.
Julia Roberts, partner and education & research sector lead at Hawkins\Brown, said: “This landmark building is designed to provide students with the best possible entry point into creative industries.
“Our design brings Nottingham Trent University’s creative arts subjects together in a single building that breaks down silos between disciplines and creates opportunities for collaboration in both physical and digital practice.
“Using our in-house carbon assessment tool, H\B:ERT, we have been able to evaluate the carbon impact of our choices throughout the design process. This new building for Nottingham Trent University reaches a high standard for sustainability and the university has committed to making it a whole-life net zero carbon university building.”
The building has been designed to achieve BREEAM ‘Excellent’ and DEC ‘A’ rating. Design decisions, such as the use of post-tensioned concrete slabs and ceramic cladding, have been optimised to reduce their carbon impact using Hawkins\Brown’s self-developed, open-source H\B:ERT software.
Michael Marsden, executive dean for the School of Art & Design at Nottingham Trent University, added: “This new development at 40–42 Shakespeare Street is not only an architecturally significant building for Nottingham and Nottingham Trent University but one which sees the School of Art & Design becoming the leading art school for the creative industries.
“Its bold new courses, in a newly created department, will combine traditional design practice with creative technologies that will not only produce graduates for the fastest growing sector in the UK economy, but place Nottingham as the centre for film, television, animation, UX design, games design, graphic design and more.”
