Building Case StudyEvgeniy Velichkov

Finsbury Health Centre

BUIL-1166-M01-2013-14 Introduction to Building Environments and Construction

00 Introduction

The Grade I-listed Finsbury Health Centre (1938) in Clerkenwell, London, is a revolutionary building designed by the Russian architect Berthold Lubetkin and his Tecton practice. Before the centre was built , various health services were accomodated in separate buildings across the borough. The new health Centre centralized all services and made them accessible from all parts of the borough. In addition the health services , the building also provided office space, a reception, writing room and a lecture theatre.

Orderly design

Different elements of the building are well

placed, clearly defined with clean and purposeful architectural character

The exterior is functional yet monumental

and symbolic of the modernisation of the Health Service.

The interior is far less monumental but instead, carefully designed to the needs of the Patients.

Finsbury is a district of central London,

England. It lies immediately north of the City of London and Clerkenwell, west of Shoreditch, and south of Islington and City

Road, also it is in the south of the London Borough of Islington.

This image shows where Finsbury Health Centre is located and its comparison to the

sizes of the surrounding buildings.

This image shows the open area behind the centre, the surrounding buildings and the roads. Also i have included information from the Islington Council website.

This diagram shows more of the surroundings

and helps me understand what else is situated near the health centre.

This image shows the traffic

around the Centre and the

bicycle routes.

Those are images of a model of Finsbury

health centre, which helps with the understanding of how the building was constructed.

Those images show where the different areas

are situated in the building, what are they used for and how the movement of people is done .

01 Air

Air is the invisible gaseous substance surrounding the

earth, a mixture of oxygen and nitrogen mainly.

Air (pressure, wind speed and humidity) has different

effects on the buildings and must be taken into consideration when the building is designed.

Since Finsbury health centre is two floors tall, wind and pressure dont have much effect on it.

Sun heating is to be seen mainly on the right hand side of the facade during the day, which heats up half

of the building while the other half remains colder. This allows the air inside the centre to circulate.

These diagrams show how air convection

works during day and night outside. This also applies inside buildings.

Those sketches show how air goes inside the

building and how it moves inside. Initially the building was ventilated only by windows, and had no artificial ventilating system, nowadays

there are fans on the windows , which provide ventilation without losing thermal

energy.

These images show how air is heated by the

sun during the most sun intensive period of the day.

Finsbury health centre was initially designed

to be heated by ceiling heating system, but that didn’t work too well because of how hot and cold air exchange in height and later on

radiators were added to heat the building.

The idea behind the ventilation of finsbury is

embedded in the wall painting.

02 Light

Finsbury Health Centre was designed so it

allows the lobby to have sunlight all around the year which makes the patients more cheerful and take care of depression.

This diagram shows the sun movement during

the day from sunrise until dawn.

The right handside facade and the front get

more sunlight . The left facade does not get direct sunlight.

Those drawings show the shadow that the building produces during surise and at 12 a.m.

This diagram of the sun position shows an

understanding how much light the building gets and what times of day the building gets the best sunlight, in this case it seems the

north east side of the building has the least sunlight however in the west and east side it

gets the best sunlight through the day. also we could see that there are some sunlight being blocked on the east side of the building

causing the building to some of the sunlight during 10:00am to 12:00pm in the day.

These are sunpath diagrams that show how

the sun goes in the building through the windows.

This is the architects vision of the

atmosphere that the light will create inside the building.

03 Ground

Finsbury Health Centre was designed in 1938 by the

modernist architect Berthold Lubetkin and his design was verified and completed by Sir Ove Nyquist Arup. The building is a masterpiece of early modernism

and it was built using reinforced concrete. The structure was made using glass, marble, steel,

bronze. The furniture inside was designed by AlvarAalto. Because The World War II started, the building was transformed into an infirmary and

sandbags were put on the roof. This resulted into the cracking the glass bricks. The system of

plumbing was changed as well in that period

This diagram shows the structure of the health

centre and mentiones some of the materials and why they were used.

1. Exterior coating is made of many plaques.

2. The entrance wall is made of glass bricks.

3. Entrance door is made of glass framed by a

bronze structure.

4. Windows are made of glass surrounded by a

metal frame which is connected to a wooden structure.

5. The panels are made of a thermal insulating material.

These sketches show in detail the

construction of the windows in the building.

Those photos show the side facade and the

entrance and show the glass bricks and the panels used .

04 Water

Finsbury health centre plumbing system were assembled and created in order for all the plumbing pipes to be concealed ducts; easy and quickly assessable through removable panels for connecting additional fittings when there is in need of further repairs or adjustments.

This image shows the main drainage of London and where Finsbury health centre is situated.

It also shows that London, as a city situated mainly around the Thames, uses the river as a source of safe

for drinking water, energy and drainage. The city is connected to the Thames by canals and sewerages, also dams and water treatment plants.

This is a section that shows where the hot water and cold water pipes are, and also where the drainages and boilers are.

This is a 3D view of the plumbing in the

building.

This diagram shows how the ceiling heating

system is heating the building and where the boiler room is.

This diagram shows the plumbing system .

05 Engergy

Energy is one of the basic quantitative properties describing a physical

system or object's state. Energy can be transformed (converted) among a number of forms that may each manifest and be measurable in differing ways.

In buildings it is important nowadays to find ways of producing different types of energy without destroying or polluting the environment.

Finsbury Health Centre was built in 1938 and at that time sustainability and

energy consumption were not a big issue . The design of the building was a masterpiece of the time it was because there was a consideration of how to effectively use the building .

The way the Centre is constructed is impressive. The use of panels for the

exterior walls in order to have access to the plumbing and the same time for insulating the walls was a new and great idea. However, the windows waste thermal energy because of their wide surface. This is the reason

there was an implementation of artificial ventilation inside the windows. Instead of opening the windows and wasting thermal energy, the building

uses artificial ventilation based on electricity for lower costs

Wind turbines are great for producing eco-friendly energy without polluting the environment. They are somewhat new and developing technology and some countries are trying to increase the quantity of green energy produced by building more and more of those.

The rotating of the turbines is achieved when there is wind. Using an electrical generator, the rotation then gets converted into an electrical current. The energy is mainly used by small homes, and is also harnessed by large wind farm.

Solar energy can be used by having solar panels, which turn the solar energy in electricity or by having big windows that allow the solar energy to enter the building.

Solar energy can be used for providing heating and hot water.

When solar panels did not exist people were still using the solar energy for heating water by placing it in metal barrels on the roofs of the building where it would be heated by the sun during the day.

As Finsbury Health Centre has almost all the

sides covered in glass or windows , it allows the sunlight to go in during the day, thus giving the opportunity for saving energy by

using natural light rather then artificial.

06 RecycleHealth care facilities can generate up to 25 pounds of waste per day per patient; however, that waste represents an environmental footprint much larger than just the cost and impact of disposing of the materials: For every pound of product manufactured in the United States, 32 pounds of waste are created during the manufacturing process, and transportation also adds to the environmental impact of products a hospital purchases.

Waste management initiatives offer tremendous opportunities for a facility to reduce both its environmental footprint and its supply chain and waste disposal expenses. Estimates of cost savings can be as high as 40–70 percent of waste disposal outlays, representing $4–7 billion in savings for the industry as a whole.

Understanding Your Waste. The first step to improving a facility's waste management is to understand its overall waste stream. Non-regulated waste, which makes up around 85 percent of a hospital's total waste stream, is no different from the waste generated by a hotel, where up to 60 percent is either recyclable or compostable. Regulated medical waste (sharps, pathological waste, trace chemo, and so on) makes up about 5–15 percent and hazardous chemical waste makes up a smaller percentage (less than 5 percent) of a health care organization's waste by total volume.

Source : http://www.sustainabilityroadmap.org/topics/waste.shtml#.UqklrvRdVqU

Recycling

What happens to your waste & recycling?

All of your mixed waste will go to our authorised recycling centre & waste recovery facility in Wembley. Our authorised facility is designed to handle commercial, industrial and household waste streams and all mixed waste and recycling arrives directly at our authorised material recycling centre & waste recovery via our fleet of vehicles. The recyclable elements are picked out & dropped into bays where they are baled & sent to various re-processing plants.

Rfl make sure your recyclable items are re-used to make other products:

Paper & card produces newsprint for daily newspapers, toilet roll & cardboard tubes

Glass is made into fine glass sand and used to make bottles and jars, fibreglass, concrete & asphalt for road surfacing.

Aluminium and Steel make new products such as cans and car parts

Plastic Bottles are reprocessed into new bottles

Food & Drink cartons are used to make new paper products, the remaining plastic and aluminium can then be used in furniture, to generate energy

Over the last 12 months our targets have been exceeded and in October 2012 Rfl achieved 0% to landfill.

If you wish to Separate Your Waste from recycling…

Rfl can provide you with separate collections for all types of recyclables.

Separated recycling collections are available for cardboard, glass, plastic, paper, food, aluminium & steel

Our service is very flexible and we are here to advise you of your best options.

Monthly, quarterly and annual waste & recycling reports are available so you can see how much waste you generate

All customers are provided with a Senior Waste & Recycling consultant dedicated to their account

Source : http://recyclingforlondon.co.uk/recycling/

07 Synthesis and Conclusion

Finsbury Health Centre was a very modern buildings for its time and the design is still stunning. Although a very old building, it is somewhat very well conserved but it is lacking the initial atmosphere. It is slowly turning into a normal hospital with depressing and dark indoor spaces . The outside of the building is showing its age and no longer has that sparkling vision.

The building managed to succeed in being open and bright , with lots of fresh air, but miserably failed in trying to reinvent the heating system – ceiling heating.

The technologies that were used were very modern for the time of the construction and maybe that was part of the reason the building failed in some of its initial ideas.

In my opinion if the building remains a health centre and if some refurbishments are done, it could look young again and bring back the spark of a municipal healthcare.

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