Mayville Community Centre

Compare the thermal image of our Passivhaus Mayville Community Centre with a nearby school built in 1958 (click more below). Same time, same camera settings. Use the temperature scale to see the facade temperature. The nearer to yellow, the more heat is being wasted. The nearer to blue or black, the less heat is being wasted. Enough said.

The Mayville Community Centre picked up the award for Best Public Building at the 3R (Refurb, Rethink, Retrofit) Awards 2011 at a presentation held last night at the Royal Garden Hotel, Kensington, where many of those playing a pioneering role in this sector were present. 

Following the success of the inaugural Retrofit Awards, launched in 2010, the awards were expanded to include all areas of the retrofit and refurbishment markets.

The Mayville Community Centre has been shortlisted in the 3R Awards Public Building category alongside Central Hall, Keighley (Hodson Architects) and The Octagon, Haringey (Mace).  The winners will be anounced at an awards ceremony on 10th November at The Royal Garden Hotel, Kensington.

The external works at the Mayville are now underway to start to put the south garden back together. The garden will be used for community food growing projects, host fruit trees, birds and bees, and provide valuable accessible outdoor space for the building.

Following Jeremy’s visit to the Mayville Community Centre at the beginning of June where he was shown round the building by Rachel Witherick (b:a), Trevor Mbatha (MCP), Jessie White (MCP) and David Ironside (site manager for the contractor), today Jeremy visited our offices and joined us for the daily office lunch. Jeremy is hugely supportive of the passivhaus refurbishment of the community centre, a building he has been personally using for nearly 30 years in his role as Labour MP for Islington North.

Jenny Jones, of the Green Party and GLA, visited the Mayville Community Centre project this morning which is now weeks off completion. She was hugely supportive of what has been achieved by the Mildmay Community Partnership, bere:architects and the construction team, stating when she received the description of the project she could not believe all that was being done by a small community trust on one building. She was interested to hear how the fund raising efforts and vision of the MCP, with the expertise and technical support of local architectural practice, bere:architects, had translated into such a ground breaking and exemplar community project.

The green roof installation RIBA Flash event on the 4th May was attended by 10 enthusiasts at the Mayville Community Centre all eager to learn from the leading green roof expert, Dusty Gedge. Dusty is the designer of the green roofs at Mayville where two areas of green roof have being installed. The group heard from Rachel Witherick of bere:architects about how the green roof is an integral component of the low energy environmental building ethos and proposals at the Mayville. Improving the ecology of this inner city site is of critical importance for both the architects and the client.

Paul Jennings of Aldas was on site on Friday to carry out the first air permeability test of the Mayville Community centre. Although a little later than expected, the building recorded a result of 0.53 air changes per hour at 50 Pascals (using the rigorous Attma standard 2007 methodology) – the first non-domestic retrofit result that we know of to reach the passivhaus requirement.

The window fitting flash event was attended by 20 very keen architects and students last Thursday at the Mayville Community Centre all eager to learn from this practical training opportunity. The group witnessed the installation of one of the south elevation windows being installed in two pieces by the main contractor.

The awesome 4×2m triple glazed fixed roof lights have now been craned into place onto the main roof at Mayville completing the final phase of works to make the roof fully water tight. PV and Solar panel installations are now fully underway. The roof lights, both Velux and fixed units, will allow abundant natural daylight into the main hall whilst allowing for summer night time ventilation to purge any heat that has built up during the day. Internal plaster works and decorations are also well under way. All works are leading up to the first air test scheduled for the end of March.