New Court, Trinity College, Cambridge was presented at the AT Awards live finals on 7 November 2022 at the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health to a jury comprising, Nana Biamah-Ofosu, Peter Bishop, Hanif Kara, David Partridge, Simon Allford and Chair Isabel Allen. Read about how the project has stood the test of time, below.
Originally rendered with Roman cement, the courtyard-facing façades have been re-rendered using a permeable hydraulic lime painted with limewash. Credit: Timothy Soar
Trinity College, Cambridge, commissioned 5th Studio to undertake a deep retrofit of New Court, a Grade I-listed building containing student accommodation and teaching space. Designed by William Wilkins and completed in1822, the building had been subject to ad hoc alterations over the years, none of which addressed changing requirements relating to fire safety, environmental health, thermal performance and energy consumption or modern-day expectations of amenity and comfort.
A key aim was to reduce CO2 emissions to 1/8 of the existing level by halving energy demand, doubling the efficiency of lighting, heating, ventilation and controls, and halving the amount of carbon in the energy supply by using photovoltaics and a ground source heat pump.
Monitoring the performance of the existing fabric and building, a calibrated WUFI model gave the design team sufficient information to challenge the accepted wisdom that insulating the inside face of solid brick walls would cause interstitial condensation and mould growth at the interface of the brickwork and insulation. Post-occupancy monitoring underlined the importance of calibrating models against local weather data and the properties of the materials on site. For example, the regularity, density, and moisture transport properties of the bricks differ from those in standard tables leading to a better thermal performance than predicted by U-value calculations or WUFI modelling.
The new centralised plantroom. Credit: Timothy Soar
Data from post-occupancy monitoring is being shared with the local authority and Historic England. The Cambridge City Local Plan has adopted the methodology developed on this project as an exemplar for the sustainable retrofit of historic and listed buildings.
Refurbished study bedroom. Services and uplighters are concealed in wooden panels. Credit: Timothy Soar
