Both the site and the neighbouring sites are on varying levels, with undulating levels around the edges, and required works to improve the divisions between them. Travis Perkin’s wish to incorporate a showroom alongside their conventional branch offering, brought about more freedom for design creativity. Being in a prominent location, it had to look striking as well as successfully showcase their products. The planners stipulated that renewable energy should provide 10% of the energy use for the site as a whole, with a planning condition being that carbon neutrality had to be targeted to avoid paying an offset. Solar panels were installed on the showroom building to achieve this and gave a 20% reduction in CO2.

The busy building materials centre and outside yard is complemented with a double storey showroom building that is spacious and light filled, combining a ground floor trade centre with a first-floor showroom. Aluminium framed windows were specified because of their environmental and recyclable properties, whilst Pilkington Spandrel glass panels were selected for their aesthetics and safety features, and were internally insulated with a film applied. The cantilevered featured glazing required very involved detailing throughout. It has been a very interesting and exciting project to work on.