国产探花

Great Yarmouth Winter Gardens

Great Yarmouth, UK

国产探花 helped shape the sustainable restoration and future viability of Great Yarmouth鈥檚 Winter Gardens, providing integrated expertise in building services, sustainability, acoustics and fire engineering. Through advanced analysis, low-carbon design strategies and close stakeholder collaboration, we balanced the challenges of heritage conservation, visitor comfort and commercial operation. Our work has helped create a practical, high-performing solution that will safeguard this nationally significant landmark for future generations.

Great Yarmouth鈥檚 Winter Gardens is a Grade II* listed 鈥渁t risk鈥� building, which has for a number of years stood in a decaying state without a sustainable, viable use. It is the last surviving example of a Victorian ironwork glasshouse in the UK that sits on a seaside promenade.

It has not been open to the public since 2008 but, in previous incarnations, was a symbol of the golden era of the seaside resort. Public consultation demonstrated real demand from local residents for the Winter Gardens to be brought back to life.

Designed by Torquay architects John Watson and William Harvey, the Winter Gardens was first built between 1878 and 1881 and functioned as a pleasure palace designed to extend the tourism season by offering a fun venue for leisure and entertainment. In 1903, the glasshouse was purchased by J.W. Cockrill on behalf of Great Yarmouth Town Council and, transported by barge in 1904 and reconstructed next to Wellington Pier, where it still stands today.

We delivered a bespoke sustainability framework and a detailed operational carbon reduction strategy, including digital energy modelling of the site.

Large, six-metre diameter stratification ceiling fans will help to create air movement, powered by a small solar PV array on an unglazed section of the roof.

Suspended radiant heaters provide a low-energy top up of heat from above 鈥� ensuring we are only attempting to heat the area where people will be gathered.

Rainwater harvesting mitigations will include a buried 20,000-litre collection tank below the south services block, which will feed into the irrigation system and serve the flushing of toilets.

We advised on a fabric-first passive design. A key focus will be to maximise and restore the Victorian method of high and low-level openings to drive airflow through the building and help achieve a comfortable environment.

Challenge

Since its closure in 2008, the local authority 鈥� now Great Yarmouth Borough Council 鈥� has worked to identify a future sustainable use for the building. In 2021, the Winter Gardens was one of five transformational heritage projects across the country to be awarded a Heritage Horizon Award from The National Lottery Heritage Fund.

The project has been made possible thanks to 拢11,845,858 from The National Lottery Heritage Fund and National Lottery players. A project team is now working on the full restoration and repurposing of the building. The project, which is also partly funded by the Town Deal Fund and Great Yarmouth Borough Council, aims to save, restore and repurpose the Winter Gardens as well as being a powerful commercial contributor to the regeneration of Great Yarmouth鈥檚 seafront and an innovative environmental project.

The building will reopen as an all-year round attraction and will have two coherent and integrated parts 鈥� a visitor experience for exploring the heritage, focusing on heritage, environmental change and sustainability, as well as a food and drink offering with a commercial operator partner.

国产探花 was engaged to work closely alongside the wider design team, led by architect BFF, to provide expertise around building services engineering (MEP), sustainability, acoustics and fire engineering. Our sustainability team also provided comprehensive consultancy around embodied and operational carbon, circular economy, transport and waste considerations biodiversity, as well as considering the interaction with people-focused aspects, such as social value, healthy building environments, inclusivity and accessibility.

Some of the key challenges the project presented included poor performance due to the historic glazed envelope, 聽challenging upgrades to the historic fabric, achieving high environmental conditions for a mixed use space and alignment with the emerging Net Zero Carbon Buildings Standard.

Designed by local Torquay architects John Watson and William Harvey, the Winter Gardens was first built in Torquay between 1878 and 1881 at a cost of 拢12,783. Image: The National Lottery Heritage Fund.

Solution

A rigorous, evidence-led design approach was adopted throughout the project, combining advanced thermal comfort dynamic energy and fire and smoke modelling, natural ventilation analysis, embodied carbon assessment and acoustic studies to guide decision making and evaluate design options to provide clear recommendations to the client and wider stakeholder group. MEP systems and plant will be completely replaced with modern, highly efficient, low energy equipment.

We have also delivered a bespoke sustainability framework and a detailed operational carbon reduction strategy. This includes comprehensive digital energy modelling of the site, which follows the three areas of environmental, social and governance (ESG), alongside the Great Yarmouth Borough Council Sustainability Strategy 鈥� focused on climate, nature and waste challenges. This was also developed collaboratively from the earliest stages to ensure that proposed solutions were practical, buildable and fully integrated. We placed particular focus on balancing occupant comfort, horticultural requirements and operational efficiency. Working closely with specialist advisors, including representatives from Kew Gardens and conservatory experts, the team developed environmental design parameters capable of supporting both planting and people throughout the year.

Additionally, the energy strategy followed a clear hierarchy of reducing demand first, maximising passive environmental control, and deploying efficient low-carbon systems. The final solution incorporated automated natural ventilation, internal solar control blinds, air source heat pumps and highly efficient lighting systems. This ensured the building would not overheat in summer and could be operated economically during winter months.

We鈥檝e also advised on the use of nature-friendly aspects for the planting, including a peat-free and pesticide-free commitment and drought tolerant planting, helping to support an internal biodiversity net gain.

When it comes to the internal space, a staircase to the upper levels doubles as seating, making the central atrium a flexible events space. Our acoustics team advised on the use of a special transparent film layer for the glass above, to improve the acoustics of this space so that it could host a mixture of uses and our fire engineers developed a comprehensive fire strategy, which included the integration of an escape bridge connected to the neighbouring plant room building, to enable new fire escape routes from the first floor.

The holistic design process has considered heritage conservation, commercial viability, operational performance, embodied carbon, cost, occupant comfort and planting requirements simultaneously rather than as individual disciplines. Every major design decision has been tested through detailed analysis and evaluated against project objectives. 

Advanced modelling and specialist studies ensured that design decisions were based on evidence rather than assumptions. This enabled the optimisation of environmental performance while respecting the constraints of the listed structure. The resulting design achieved operational energy performance aligned with the UKGBC Net Zero Carbon Buildings Standard and delivered a further 15% improvement through refinement of lighting strategies, controls, natural ventilation, and specification of best-in-class efficiency plant, beyond the initial Stage 3 target.

The retention and reuse of the existing structure and having capitalised on the carbon already stored within the historic building, the project has managed to achieve an upfront embodied carbon position aligned with RIBA 2030 targets equivalent to an approximate 50% reduction compared with delivering an equivalent new-build facility.

Value

Our role has extended beyond technical design to that of trusted adviser, supporting the Council through heritage funding requirements, helping shape the National Lottery Heritage Fund business case, demonstrating that exemplary sustainability outcomes could be achieved whilst protecting and celebrating the heritage significance of the asset. We used a simplified story telling approach, translating complex technical analysis into clear and accessible information, which enabled informed decision making and built confidence in the final strategy.

Our close collaboration with conservation specialists, Kew Gardens and international conservatory experts who provided confidence that environmental conditions would support both planting and visitor experience, have created a venue capable of supporting a flexible range of uses whilst maintaining manageable operating costs and high levels of environmental performance, delivering tangible long-term value rather than simply achieving compliance targets.