Officially opened by the Queen in March 2008 the Manchester Civil Justice Centre completely fulfils its demanding brief to provide a sustainable building of civic generosity and European significance. The new building is the biggest court complex to be built in the UK since the Royal Courts of Justice in London.

Acclaimed

Manchester Civil Justice Centre was named as Project of the Year 2008 at the prestigious Building Awards, organised by the leading industry magazine, Building. This award is a perfect partner to the Major Project of the Year accolade that it won for its outstanding sustainability credentials at the Green Construction Awards last year. The centre also scooped a further three awards for sustainable design – the Rose Design Awards’ Architecture Grand Prix Gold Award and Best Public Building Gold Award.

Unprecedented

The centre comprises 47 court rooms, tribunal and hearing rooms plus offices and facilities for judges in a landmark 16-storey building designed by architect Denton Corker Marshall. It features an 11-storey atrium and a spectacular 63m by 60m cavity glass wall along its western edge. Sixty metre high triangular atrium columns support the glass façade all suspended from the atrium roof. Equally complex are the floors cantilevering 15m from the building's columns.

Meeting the requirement for natural ventilation means that the structure has had to be designed to accommodate a complex web of ductwork to allow air taken in at the sides of the atrium – through wind scoops facing the direction of the prevailing wind – to circulate through the building.

The natural ventilation system is designed to maximise free cooling potential and comfort in mid-season. An intelligent building management system brings in a back-up forced ventilation system if the wind speed is too low to achieve this. Other features include an ‘environmental veil’ on the east façade to control solar gain but also maximise natural daylight, and groundwater cooling, which alone reduces cooling load energy consumption by around 15-20%.

Our services:

• Ecologically sustainable design (ESD) features
• Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modelling
• Early modelling results for the value management process and design development
• Large open floor span design

Among the most complex aspects of the building’s design are the unusual cantilevering fingers. High tensile forces are produced at the top of each finger and high compression at the bottom. These forces are distributed through the composite steel deck floors, via tension reinforcement where appropriate, to the main slipformed concrete corefloor. The complete trusses have been fabricated and welded together at the steelwork contractor’s works. Because of their size each unit needed a police escort and had to be delivered to site after 7pm.

Another unusual feature for a court building is the centre's large open floor spans – Mott MacDonald brought in its bridge designers to help analyse floor vibrations including the effects of foot fall.

Co-ordinating the structure and services as well as meeting the architect’s requirements has been a key challenge, calling for advanced 3D modelling in particular locations.

Architect: Denton Corker Marshall
Client: Allied London Properties and Bovis Lend Lease