The Featherstone Building was designed with sustainability at its heart.
It is an intelligent, net-zero carbon building that uses smart sensors to optimise energy usage across 126,700 square feet of office and shared amenity space.
The facility has Platinum SmartScore certification, which is a global standard for smart buildings based on exceptional user experience, cost efficiency, high sustainability, and future-readiness, and an EPC Rating 'A', WiredScore Platinum, AirScore Design & Operation Gold and BREEAM Outstanding.
Lighting designer Pritchard Themis proposed a fully bespoke, circular lighting system that would enhance the building’s sustainability credentials.
Whitecroft’s brief was to deliver lighting that would complement the building’s unique industrial heritage and architecture and highlight the contrasting exposed concrete ceilings and echoes of a Victorian-era warehouse.
Lighting would be essential to creating an inspiring and characterful space - a unique, welcoming, and relaxed atmosphere that would attract the likes of tech startups and businesses that value something that little bit different.
Collaboration
On a project as detailed as this, early-stage design collaboration can be essential to staying on schedule, and we took the opportunity to visit Whitecroft in Manchester to review its custom-designed lighting prototypes.
This early contact reassured us that there would be no issues after delivery and that the installation process would run smoothly.
To achieve this, Whitecroft Lighting custom-designed and manufactured 1,300 bespoke linear lighting units that included 20 variations, along with presence detectors and emergency lighting.
We were keen to learn more about Whitecroft’s approach to circularity. The company’s efforts to reduce the whole-life carbon in buildings mirror Skanska’s mission to lead the decarbonisation of the construction industry.
We aim to make all our building projects carbon-neutral without using carbon offsetting schemes, and our supply chain is integral to achieving this goal.
To achieve these goals, we need to be able to accurately calculate the carbon, so Whitecroft’s Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) helped us with carbon reporting, and the impact that circular lighting design has on whole-life carbon.
Modular lighting
Whitecroft’s lighting at The Featherstone is modular and upgradeable by design, so in the future, the facilities management team can easily upgrade components without the need to replace the entire lighting unit. This will significantly reduce future waste and embodied carbon.
Transport embodied carbon is also reduced due to Whitecroft being a UK manufacturer, along with other benefits, such as accessibility and speed of response - if we needed to review anything it is just a short train ride away.
There’s no doubt that The Featherstone Building was a challenging brief, both in terms of the aesthetic and sustainability, but I’m in agreement with designers Pritchard Thermis, and developers Derwent London, that the lighting met all our expectations.
This is in no small part to Whitecroft’s innovative approach to reducing operational and embodied carbon which contributed to the building’s impressive sustainability credentials.
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