The Quays New Office and Service Response Centre 

Introduction

Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council, as part of a strategic accommodation review, has consolidated various facilities to improve efficiency and replace several offices and depots.

The new accommodation falls into two distinct types. Firstly, general office accommodation, and secondly, various workshops, storage, ancillary office and vehicle depot functions, which have been gathered into the Service Response Centre. Spare land on the site has been made available for possible future development by the Council, or by a private developer.

Parking & Landscaping

Parking is provided in two distinct categories – a large area of hard surfacing for the council’s vehicle pool of vans, lorries etc, and a car park for visitors and the staff of both buildings. The car park has been arranged in an elliptical form, fitting the shape of the north east corner of the site. Generous landscaping strips break up the parking bays and are planted with a high proportion of native species, including the heathers of the local hills, and other plants suitable for the exposed coastal conditions, to encourage the local wildlife.

Form

One of the key decisions was to set the width of the office floorplate at a relatively narrow 13.5m. This would enable good natural day lighting to the open plan office space.

The need for at least three escape staircases and a central lift core, a desire to create an airy communal break-out space and the constraints of the site planning philosophy led to the concept of two parallel wings, overlapping each other and joined by an atrium and circulation core. The building was orientated on a broadly east-west axis so that the wide elevations were facing north-south and therefore, solar shading could be optimised.

The architectural expression of the elevations is directly related to the choice of materials and the main structural grid spacing of 7.5m. The elevations are organised generally into a series of cladding frames and curtain wall central panels. However, to make the composition more dynamic and increase the presence of the building in sculptural terms, we considered the way the different blocks of building related together and introduced some simple angular forms to put an emphasis or accent on the following parts:-

• Main atrium entrance on the east, with a sloping glazed roof, projecting forward over the entrance lobby. It rises above the general office roof parapets.

• The west entrance, approached from the SRC and leading to the café and breakout area, using a low monopitch roof with large overhangs.

• The eastern end of the north wing, made into its own independent wedge shape form, “floating” over the ground floor glazing and landscaping. This is a focal point and is the leading corner of the building when approached from the site entrance.

• The central stair, lifts and toilets were emphasised by the additional 3rd floor to house the main plant rooms. They were central in plan to allow ducts to drop straight into each of the office floor wings and were exploited as the highest point of the building to create a second, but large wedge shape. Like the other, its sides project at an angle to form a cowl around the still vertical glazed and clad elevation.

Both of the wedge shaped blocks are coloured differently to the main background elements and provide interest to the form of the building without compromising the efficiency of the plan or the structure. They are separated from the adjacent parts by a glazed strip of elevation, marking the axis of the bridge between both wings.