The Crystal
| The Crystal | |
|
Essex | |
|---|---|
.jpg) The Crystal | |
| Location | |
| Grid reference: | TQ40038066 |
| Location: | 51°30’27"N, -0°-0’59"E |
| History | |
| Address: | One Siemens Brothers Way, Royal Victoria Dock |
| Built 2011-2012 | |
| By: | WilkinsonEyre |
| Neo-futurism | |
| Information | |
| Owned by: | Greater London Authority |
| Website: | www.thecrystal.org |
The Crystal is a building on Royal Victoria Dock in the docklands of south-western Essex, built apparently to demonstrate techniques in 'sustainability', of energy if not of taxpayers' money. It uses solar power and ground source heat pumps to generate its own energy.
The building contains a permanent exhibition about sustainable development.[1] It is owned by the Greater London Authority[2] and operated by Siemens. It is part of the Green Enterprise District policy that covers much of the old docks are.
Design
The Crystal was designed by Perkins+Will (fit-out, design leader) and Wilkinson Eyre Architects (shell and core), with Arup Group who were the building and civil engineers, and Townshend Landscape Architects who designed the public realm. Event Communications were the Exhibition Designers, responsible for the interpretive planning, exhibition design and creative direction, graphic design, media direction and construction management for the exhibition spaces.[3]
Public realm
The entire site is 193,750 square feet in size and the surrounding landscape was designed to be a 'sustainable urban landscape' to help 'encourage a shift in the social ideology' while allowing social activities to carry on within the site. The designers included for this purpose local food programmes and 'community gardens'.[4]
Infrastructure
The building is a showcase for sustainable building technologies. At the heart of this are the building management system and 'KNX infrastructure'. The building control devices, such as lighting, windows, blinds and heating, are connected using the KNX protocol. The building has over 2,500 KNX connected devices.[5]
Potential use
In order to save £55 million for the Greater London Authority over the course of five years, in June 2020, the Mayor announced that he was consulting on relocating the headquarters of the Greater London Authority from their rented home at City Hall (which itself was designed for energy-efficiency, but which is quite the opposite) to The Crystal.[2]
Pictures
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By Royal Docks -
Aerial view -
View from Emirates Cable car -
Glass panels
.jpg)
Outside links
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("Wikimedia Commons" has material about The Crystal) |
References
- ↑ "About The Crystal". 2012. http://www.thecrystal.org/_html/about/about.html.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 "Mayor to consult on relocating City Hall to protect services". June 24, 2020. https://www.london.gov.uk//press-releases/mayoral/mayor-to-consult-on-relocating-city-hall.
- ↑ The Crystal: A Sustainable Cities Initiative by Siemens: Event Communications
- ↑ The Crystal by Townshend Landscape Architects: Landezine
- ↑ "Case Study: The Crystal – A Siemens Sustainable Cities Initiative Featuring KNX – KNXtoday". http://knxtoday.com/2013/11/2605/case-study-the-crystal-a-siemens-sustainable-cities-initiative-featuring-knx.html.