1. Political circlesLaingO’RourkeandHerzog&deMeuronputanewspin
on concrete and glass at Oxford’s School of Government
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2. 30 | FEBRUARY 2016 | CONSTRUCTION MANAGER
TechnicalEnvelope
Herzog & de Meuron’s Blavatnik School of Government
presented huge strategic challenges, but Laing O’Rourke
applied offsite techniques on a unique landmark with an
innovative glazed facade. Tom Ravenscroft reports
POLITICAL
CORRECTNESS
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3. CONSTRUCTION MANAGER | FEBRUARY 2016 | 31
TechnicalEnvelope
Opposite and above:
The building’s form is
expressed as a series
of stacked discs, with
a D-shape breaking
out at first-floor level
“This is not
your typical
LaingO’Rourke
approach”
MikeMorris,
LaingO’Rourke
market, the school’s lofty ambition is to
train the world’s future leaders. Given this
aim, it is not surprising that the university
desired a piece of statement architecture.
Following the US academic funding
model, a wealthy donor – in this case
controversial international businessman
and investor Leonard Blavatnik, the UK’s
richest man – was enticed to pay for the
building and Swiss architect Herzog &
de Meuron commissioned to design it.
The practice has designed a distinctive
and impressive building. The Blavatnik’s
new six-storey home piles unevenly
stacked discs that diminish in size and
recede from the main road. Transparency is
an important concept for the school, which
is fully glazed, with each of the discs
wrapped in a double-layered glazed skin
(see box, p33). Internally, the heart of the
8,000 sq m building is an extremely
generous full-height atrium, or forum
space, from which it derives its form.
The building’s unique geometry, with
several cantilevers and no two floorplates
alike, as well as plentiful exposed
concrete completed to the extremely high
level of finish demanded by both architect
and client, meant this was a daunting
commission. To deliver this high-profile
building, the University of Oxford
entrusted its long-term collaborator Laing
O’Rourke. Over the course of the past
15 years the contractor has completed 11
buildings for the client, including both the
£11m student accommodation block for
Somerville College that stands next to
the new school of government and the
£70m Mathematical Institute behind it.
This was a relationship that Mike Morris,
Laing O’Rourke’s project director, was
keen to continue by demonstrating the
contractor’s skills on the challenges of the
Blavatnik School, although initially his
boss did not agree. “When I told Ray
[O’Rourke, the group executive chairman]
that we wanted to bid for this project with
its in-situ frame, he was obviously
surprised, as this is not your typical Laing
O’Rourke approach,” says Morris.
Over the past decade the contractor’s
well-publicised focus, backed by
substantial investment, has been its
offsite construction capability, aka its
Design for Manufacture and Assembly
(DfMA) methodology. Many of its recently
completed high-profile schemes, including
the Crick Institute and the Leadenhall
Building in London, make extensive use
of prefabricated elements, as does the
Department of Earth Sciences completed
for the University of Oxford in 2010.
However, at the Blavatnik the use of
offsite manufacturing was limited by
the building’s unique shape.
The school had been a point of
controversy long before Laing O’Rourke
got involved, with questions asked over
the suitability of the sponsor and the
scale of the building. Although the
modern design was deemed by some to
be unsympathetic to the area and the
neoclassical Oxford University Press
building opposite, the main bone of
contention was the building’s height.
In central Oxford, buildings within 1.2km
of St Martin’s Tower, popularly called the
Carfax Tower, are prevented from
exceeding 18.2m, while the school of
government is 22m high. However, there
have been previous exceptions – most
notably the 29.6m copper-clad stepped
spire of the Saïd Business School, funded
by Saudi-Syrian billionaire Wafic Saïd.
TAKING ON A BESPOKE starchitect-designed
building with a complex geometry that
in effect rules out the large-scale use of
off-site manufacturing goes directly
against Laing O’Rourke’s established
company culture. Yet, in Oxford, the
contractor has pulled off just that in
constructing a landmark £30m building
with an in-situ fair-faced concrete frame
for the newly established Blavatnik
School of Government.
One of a new breed of buildings
designed to assist the university to
compete in the global higher education
>
Section
Section showing floor functions
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
1. Library 5. Teaching
2. Library 6. Entrance/café
3. Academic 7. Teaching
4. Academic 8. Plant
LAINGO’ROURKE
JOHNCAIRNSHERZOG&DEMEURON
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4. 32 | FEBRUARY 2016 | CONSTRUCTION MANAGER
TechnicalEnvelope
“In verified views we
demonstrated that the quality
of the building would improve
the views across Oxford”
DavidOakey,UniversityofOxford
According to David Oakey, the client’s
in-house project manager, the
university argued that here too the rule
should be broken because of the
building’s quality: “In verified views we
demonstrated that the quality of the
building would improve the views across
Oxford. Of course having the Herzog &
de Meuron name helped with this.”
On a more practical note, the university
pointed out to planners that for many
years buildings in central Oxford have
been rising taller than the Carfax height,
which only restricts occupied floor height,
by placing plant on their roofs. At the
school the majority of plant was placed in
on a design and build contract and the
first time that the architect had been
novated,” he explains. “Their concern was
that we would dumb down the design, so
there was tension at the early stages. But
once a price was agreed, which took six
months, and confidence levels were
established that we were going to deliver
a quality project, all went well.”
The component the architect was most
concerned with was the fair-faced
concrete walls, columns, soffits and
staircases that could have no obvious
joints or surface mounting of services.
This concrete would be visible throughout
the building, and the project’s success
depended on its quality.
Herzog & de Meuron requested light-
coloured concrete that they had seen in
London, however, due to variance in
aggregate available locally, this would
have cost five times as much in Oxford.
As a solution, ground granulated blast-
furnace slag (GGBS) was used in the
concrete mix to achieve a lighter colour,
though it took longer to gain structural
strength. To achieve a lightness and
colour consistency that satisfied the
architect, client and contractor, numerous
test pours were carried out, the largest of
which was a one-to-one scale section of
the building that was the size of a house.
“The very high specification of the
concrete for the frame, along with the
integration of the M&E, made this an
extremely challenging pour,” says Steve
Holland, the contractor’s project leader.
“We invested cost in going through a
thorough process to de-risk the pour as
much as possible. There was no room for
error – we had to get it right the first time.”
Laing O’Rourke’s specialist concrete
division Expanded Structures has certainly
achieved an extremely high quality of
finish, of which Holland is rightfully proud.
“How do you like our concrete?” he asks
as we tour the building.
“The in-situ frame goes against
our company culture,” he explains,
“but we looked at everything and the
project couldn’t be built using offsite
Above and right:
A generous full-
height atrium space,
displaying the light-
coloured concrete
specified by Herzog &
de Meuron, gives the
building its form
> the basement so that the space above
ground could be fully exploited, and the
roof left uncluttered.
With planning secured, the university
was keen to get the building complete as
quick as possible. “Strategically, from the
university’s point of view we were a year
behind where we wanted to be, so there
was a real drive to get the building open
for 2015/16,” says Oakey.
According to Morris, Laing O’Rourke won
the two-stage tender to build the project
because of its approach to delivery and,
perhaps more importantly, its interface
with the design team: “This is the first
time that Herzog & de Meuron had worked
JOHNCAIRNS
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5. CONSTRUCTION MANAGER | FEBRUARY 2016 | 33
TechnicalEnvelope
A breath of fresh air: ventilation and visibility
Innovative double-skin glazing opens up the building practically and metaphorically
According to architect Herzog & de
Meuron, the principles of openness,
communication and transparency were
central to the challenge of building a
school of government. Along with the
building’s central forum, the continuous
glazed facades are the main architectural
gesture that promotes these ideals.
Each of the building’s floors is
expressed as an individual disc of
concrete and glass, with the first floor
forming a D-shape. Above the ground
floor, each of the discs is wrapped in a
double skin that consists of two glazed
facades separated by a 750mm gap.
The double-glazed inner skin, which
was manufactured by Austrian specialist
manufacture due to its complex
geometry. What we tried to do was
approach in-situ with a DfMA culture.”
Although the frame itself could not
be constructed offsite, Laing O’Rourke
was determined to use offsite techniques
where possible, so did the next best
thing. All of the formwork for the concrete
was digitally modelled and manufactured
in a controlled environment offsite
before being assembled onsite. “Using
CAD/CAM to cut the joinery by robot
gives us absolute control over the
geometry and allows us to create complex
forms very accurately,” says Holland.
Above and right: The outer layer of broken glazing
allows fresh air to circulate around the inner facade
facade contractor Waagner-Biro, acts as
the primary facade, making the building
watertight and providing its thermal
envelope. This was manufactured
offsite as a panelised system.
The permeable outer skin is formed
from 600mm wide panes of single
glazing separated by 30mm air gaps that
allow fresh air to circulate within the
void. These panes are supported
between prefabricated moulded
limestone aggregate concrete sills and
heads manufactured by Laing O’Rourke’s
DfMA company Explore Manufacturing.
These concrete units, which had their
fixing system integrated at the
production facility, are hung from the
building’s frame, with each sill and head
supporting four glazed panes.
The initial design required around 40
different-sized lintels to be constructed.
However, Laing O’Rourke rationalised
the design so the 458 concrete sections
were built in just nine predominant
unit sizes with five specials.
The double facade plays an important
part in the environmental strategy of the
building, which is set to achieve a
BREEAM excellent rating. It
creates a micro-climate
between the skins that
assists the natural cooling
and heating, and provides
extra solar gain and acoustic
protection.
The fact that the outer
glazed facade is permeable
to the elements also plays a
major role in environmental
control, especially for the
>
cellular offices that occupy the majority of
the perimeter spaces on the upper floors.
Each office is naturally ventilated with
full-height openable panels set within the
inner glazing system: the presence of the
outer layer removes any risk of accidental
falls. Floor to ceiling vents cool the room
in summer more efficiently than a high-
level opening vent, as the office’s entire
temperature gradient is impacted.
The window openings can be operated
manually or by the Building Management
System (BMS), which also controls the
intelligent blinds that ensure the building
does not overheat. These fabric blinds
are on the exterior of the inner
glazing, protected by
the outer skin.
To ensure that there was no confusion
on site, the contractor decided not to
differentiate between concrete sections
that would or would not be visible. “We
made the decision to treat all the concrete
on the project as fair-faced; this reduced
risk, but increased cost,” says Holland.
This choice meant that the entire lower
basement level, which will never be seen
by students or staff, was built with fair-
faced concrete, effectively acting as a full-
scale final test pour. Constructing areas of
the building that were not intended to be
on show to the same high standard also
has the benefit of increasing flexibility,
These concrete units, which had their
fixing system integrated at the
production facility, are hung from the
building’s frame, with each sill and head
supporting four glazed panes.
The initial design required around 40
different-sized lintels to be constructed.
However, Laing O’Rourke rationalised
the design so the 458 concrete sections
were built in just nine predominant
unit sizes with five specials.
The double facade plays an important
part in the environmental strategy of the
building, which is set to achieve a
BREEAM excellent rating. It
creates a micro-climate
between the skins that
assists the natural cooling
and heating, and provides
extra solar gain and acoustic
The fact that the outer
glazed facade is permeable
to the elements also plays a
major role in environmental
control, especially for the
does not overheat. These fabric blinds
are on the exterior of the inner
glazing, protected by
the outer skin.
1
2
3
4
1. Prefabricated
concrete head
2. Double-glazed
inner skin
3. Glazed outer skin
4. Prefabricated
concrete sill
JOHNCAIRNS
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6. 34 | FEBRUARY 2016 | CONSTRUCTION MANAGER
TechnicalEnvelope
as spaces can be repurposed without
the university having to add any
retrospective finishes. A much-trafficked
print cupboard that we passed, for example,
was originally intended to be storage.
The only element that was not poured
in-situ was the rear spiral staircase.
Although this was originally planned to be
in-situ, the complexity of the pour meant
Laing O’Rourke had to revert to plan B and
insert three precast sections.
M&E provision further complicated the
concrete pour as the majority of the wiring
containment needed to be cast into the
structure. To achieve the accuracy needed
first time, Laing O’Rourke’s in-house M&E
engineer, Crown House Technologies,
digitally modelled the containment using
GPS coordinates for all junction locations.
Access to this M&E had to be through
the floor, as all internal ceilings were
unbroken concrete, which caused issues
between designer and contractor. Herzog
& de Meuron initially wanted solid oak
flooring throughout the building. An
agreement was reached that in the
offices, which are more susceptible to
change, carpet tiles would be specified.
However, the major primary services run
below the corridors where oak flooring
was used, and this required access panels.
“It would have been an absolute
nightmare if there had been timber flooring
everywhere, due to all the services being
under the floor – having carpets in the
offices was the sensible thing to do,” says
Laing O’Rourke’s Morris. “We originally
estimated 600 access panels in the
common areas. We got this down to 300,
which the architect accepted.”
The contractor tried to use DfMA
elements wherever possible. Around the
concrete frame the building is wrapped in a
glazed double skin, with concrete sills and
lintels. These elements were manufactured
offsite at Laing O’Rourke’s Explore Industrial
Park in Steetley, Nottinghamshire. Modules
for the major M&E equipment, including
gas-fired boilers, pump sets and multi-
service risers, were also manufactured
offsite at Crown House Technologies’
facility in Oldbury in the West Midlands.
As Oxford University boasts 26
British prime ministers and at least 30
international leaders among its graduates,
the school of government is well
warranted. Many people, however, might
have preferred the institution to bear the
name of one of these, possibly Attlee or
Peel – or Gandhi or Clinton, if the aim is to
attract international students.
But Oxford is by no means the only
university to sell naming rights to its
buildings: the Alliance Manchester
Business School takes its name from
benefactor Lord Alliance, while Imperial
College has the Brevan Howard Centre for
Financial Analysis, funded by a hedge fund
set up by Alan Howard. And if you have
millions of pounds to spare, Cambridge
University’s website lists its central library
as available as the “ultimate
commemorative naming opportunity”.
Blavatnik’s donation has allowed the
university to commission one of the
world’s best architects to design an
extremely generous building. At £30m and
8,000 sq m, it’s also undoubtedly a lavish
building for the school’s 120 students – as
demonstrated by a quick comparison with
the £70m, 16,200 sq m maths building that
serves 900 students next door. But the
budget has been put to good use, with
Laing O’Rourke delivering a polished
landmark that will certainly put the new
school firmly on the international map. CM
“We made the
decision to
treat all the
concrete on
the project
as fair-faced;
this reduced
risk but
increased
cost”
SteveHolland,
LaingO’Rourke
Opposite and below:
The high-quality
fair-faced concrete
visible throughout the
interior provided the
contractor’s greatest
technical challenge
>
LAINGO’ROURKE
JOHNCAIRNS
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