Articles:

To achieve United Nations Sustainable Development Goals we must embrace environmental engineering, by doing everything we can to minimise human impact from the built environment and protect the natural world..

He, Highton and Goel remark upon the particular spaciousness of the theatres, with Goel commenting that this is a ‘major attraction’ of Circle and highlighting the fact that the anesthetic rooms are also very spacious.. ‘This facility had a particularly large percentage of orthopedic surgeons,’ says Wood, ‘and orthopedic surgeons needed a very particular form of operating theatre...more instruments tend to be involved in the operations.Therefore, we actually simulated in three dimensions, in a virtual environment, how they were going to use their equipment...we were able to position the components within the operating theatre more accurately, so that the efficiency of the operations could be greater than within a typical, general purpose operating theatre.’.

The high ceilings in the theatres are mentioned by Maswiken, as being a particularly excellent feature of the building, with respect to the way they aid with the use and management of equipment.‘You can actually leave the key equipment in those theatres, rather than moving that equipment up and down all the time,’ he says, before reflecting that actually, because the theatres benefit from ‘integrated systems,’ everything is already mounted and can just be moved around, which he refers to as, ‘yet another advantage.’.Johnston elaborates, commenting on the high level of integration between the structural, MEP, architectural finishes, electrical, data etc… All of this, he says, allowed Bryden Wood ‘to create a high level of prefabricated MEP (building in ease of maintenance and replacement) interfacing with a highly systemised superstructure.’.

In addition to these advantages, Maswiken enthuses about how lucky they are at Circle Reading to have their core/prep rooms, as well as the benefit of a layout which enables patients to go out through recovery to the wards, rather than back through the theatres.. Goel also comments on layout efficiency saying, ‘The recovery, the day case ward...is very close by.. Further to this, he and Maswiken have many other positive elements to highlight about the Circle theatres.The three used predominantly for orthopaedic surgery have laminate floors and special ventilation systems providing ultra clean air, which Goel describes as ‘perfect.’ He also enthuses about how having images of x-rays on the computer system, enables them to be projected onto a television screen on the wall.

On a more personal note, he enjoys the ability to put music on.

‘Everywhere else, I have to take my own box because they don’t have sound,’ he says, ‘so that’s quite nice.’.This means that the focus and the priority should shift from operational to embodied carbon during the design..

Embodied and operational carbon increase in a decarbonised grid scenario.In this context, the request for Whole Life Carbon Assessment (WLCA) has increased notably over the last few years.

The production of WLCA is required by BREEAM and the GLA.In a BREEAM NC 2018 assessment, it is possible to achieve up to 7 credits by doing a WLCA, so for developments that aspire to Excellent or Outstanding ratings the analysis of embodied carbon has become very important.