The new Keynsham Civic Centre & One Stop Shop has completely transformed the town centre in a way that exceeds the expectations of a corporate office development.
The redevelopment replaces outdated 1960s buildings, bringing new jobs and investment to the town centre with a new 68000 sq ft Council office, Library and One-Stop-Shop, 20,000 sq ft retail located around two new pedestrian streets, a market square, new car parking and highways improvements.
Our challenge was to accommodate 9500 sq m space within a town centre on a constrained site and across a 9m slope which gives back to the town through the creation of new public space and amenities.
Rather than filling the site with a large low rise building with One Stop Shop on the ground floor and offices above we sliced through the site with two new pedestrian streets and made the buildings taller. This gave over 50% of the site over to 24 hour accessible public space.
The project is the first in the country to target a Display Energy Certificate (DEC) A rating from the outset when supported by the Soft Landings process. The offices have already achieved an outstanding EPC rating of 5 (equivalent to 2.85kgCO2/sq m) – almost zero carbon and putting us well on course for our DEC A target.
To ensure the operational energy use is as close as possible to the design intent, we have followed the principles set out in the Soft Landings Framework. We developed an Energy Risk Register and a contractually binding energy budget. The contractor will stay engaged with the project for a two year aftercare period to optimise the energy performance.