A consistent commitment to beauty and sociability, to collaboration and engagement across disciplines and social boundaries are features that perhaps distinguish Adam Khan Architects from many other architectural practices.
This approach has resulted in collaborations with artists, who work on large-scale urban design projects with major developers, bringing together diverse stakeholders and community user groups.
One of the more exciting projects in recent times has been the Brockholes Visitor Centre, just outside Preston in Lancashire and in the lea of Junction 31 of the M6 motorway. Following an RIBA competition win, Adam Khan Architects were appointed as architects and lead consultants for the new visitor centre and the master-planning of the 67-hectare nature reserve in a contract valued at £6.2 million.
The project, with a total value of £9 million including landscaping and habitat creation, was funded by the North West Regional Development Agency and was completed in May 2011. The project achieved the new and highest rating of sustainability – BREAAM ‘Outstanding’.
Subtle but substantial re-profiling have provided a new landscape rich in biodiversity but able to withstand the rigours of large visitor numbers. Based on a natural drainage system, and forming a series of promenades and vistas, the car parking areas have become an integral part of the habitat creation and visitor experience. Multifunctional elements such as water-channels act simultaneously as drainage, orientation, play-feature, didactic tool and picturesque device.
Rather than use conventional construction techniques for the visitor centre buildings, these have been constructed on a large pontoon. As well as giving unlimited flood protection, this brings the visitor into the magical territory amongst the reeds at the water’s edge. The buildings and open spaces then form a village-like cluster rising naturally out of the reeds.
This concrete raft, which has hollow buoyancy chambers, is held in place vertically by four steel posts to stop it drifting away. Although this enables it to rise to a maximum of 3m, it is expected to only rise and fall by up to 400mm in a normal year. – This is quite a novel approach to dealing with flood plain construction and could perhaps be used elsewhere.
The Visitor Centre not only houses the traditional café, shop and information centre but also provides a large education space as well as a series of conference rooms that can be rented out to generate income. One of the key features as far as Adam was concerned was to achieve an “Outstanding” BREEAM rating – not previously achieved. Adam said, “I wanted to challenge the traditional fact-led, tick the boxes approach to BREEAM and to use the pursuit of sustainability as the means to create more beautiful buildings, not less.”
As a result, he designed high, steep-pitched roofs enclosing large volumes (good for air circulation and extraction), clad in oak shakes – rough tiles formed out of tree stumps, which would otherwise be burned as waste. Gutters are in copper (long-life, recyclable), which adds a touch of luxury. Ventilation is entirely natural. The roofs are held up with timber beams made in a precise German process, and arrive on the site “as sharp as pencils”. Insulation is a cheap but effective stuff made from recycled newspapers. The result is both outstanding and beautiful and fits well into the natural landscape.
For further information please telephone 0207 403 9897 or visit www.adamkhan.co.uk.
