Temple Quarter Enterprise Campus (TQEC) Research Hub

These high-tech facilities are inherently energy-intensive, so developing an energy strategy sympathetic to high peak loads and high cooling demands was key. New roof coverings, doors and glazing were installed to improve the thermal performance of the building fabric, which corresponded to approximately 43% of the building envelope.  
 
The systems are designed to be acoustically quiet, especially in the television studio and associated control rooms. A combination of natural and mechanical ventilation was chosen to suit perimeter or landlocked spaces and the acoustic requirements.  Very careful mechanical design was required to achieve the stringent noise criteria for the studio spaces and control rooms.  The exposed thermal mass of the retained masonry walls allows a night-cooling strategy to be adopted in naturally ventilated spaces.   Through a UK Research and Innovation net-zero grant, an efficient reversible heat pump system was installed, which recovers waste heat from the site’s large data centre and redistributes it around the site.  A large battery array is combined with photovoltaic (PV) panels and a micro-grid management and control system to allow efficient energy usage and research into the operation of micro-grids. 

The development offers a reality emulator for creating 3D digital twin modelling, a smart cinema for measuring technology's impact on humans, multi-camera live studios, and production facilities. The acoustic and lighting designs were highly specialised due to the facility's demands and were developed in collaboration with an external studio consultant.   

The studio, associated control rooms and editing suite, and the instrumented auditorium within the Coal Shed are highly acoustically sensitive spaces, designed to meet the full television industry specifications.  Delivering these levels of acoustic performance within an existing building was a challenge, and doing so within the cross-laminated timber (CLT) structure, specified because of its low embodied carbon, even more so.  The acoustic separation and ventilation designs were carefully detailed to achieve the low noise levels required for this facility to operate effectively. Independent isolated structures were built within the primary building structure, using “box-in-box" principles designed to isolate the acoustically sensitive studios from the rest of the building and exterior noise.   

The auditorium includes a full Dolby Atmos system, with an array of over 30 full-range speakers to produce 3D spatial audio at commercial cinema levels. This required careful design to provide acoustics within the room that support the immersive audio system, and also to protect adjacent areas from the high noise levels it produces. 

The lighting was carefully designed to produce the highest-quality visual media. The general lighting within the studio spaces has been precisely selected to match daylight and be consistent throughout the spaces so that images are consistent across all spaces and on all screens. 

Within the Retort Shed, careful acoustic design was required to separate the workshop, training, and computer rooms, forming the staff research accommodation adjacent to the immersive projection space of the reality emulator. Manually adjustable blinds allow for daylight control and multiple operating modes ensure that strict acoustic targets are met while also ventilating the space.