Hallé St Peter's

High-efficiency MEP services were incorporated throughout as local planning policy required the project to achieve BREEAM ‘Very Good’. A key challenge was providing appropriate building services to a range of spaces with different uses. Having no openable windows, practice rooms and the rehearsal space required mechanical ventilation with both heating and cooling. The relatively small footprint of the building and the steel construction made services coordination challenging. This was especially true in the performance spaces where ductwork sizes need to be very large to ensure air velocities are low enough not to hamper the excellent acoustics required.

For the extension, the centrepiece is the principal performance space – housed in a corten steel box with finned, riveted panels. Inside, timber-slatted walls, high-efficiency architectural lighting and hidden services provide beautiful aesthetics. The space is ventilated, heated and cooled via a dedicated air handling unit with low level displacement outlets hidden behind the timber slats. Smaller practice rooms are box-in-box construction and are environmentally controlled using VRF fan coil units. These units are located in an adjacent corridor to ensure breakout noise from the fan is minimised. Underfloor heating is provided in circulation spaces via an air source heat pump.