11 and 12 Wellington Place
Wates Construction were appointed as the main contractor for 11 and 12 Wellington Place, the latest buildings in the vast development in Leeds city centre. The two new buildings will offer a further 245,000 square feet of Grade A office space with a BREEAM Outstanding rating, as well as leisure and retail spaces.
It is expected that once the new buildings are finished they will attract a further 2,500 people to work in the area, bringing the projected total working population of Wellington Place to 12,500 people across all of the buildings in the development.
11 and 12 Wellington Place will be Net Zero Carbon buildings, and they have been designed to minimise energy consumption in office spaces. The buildings, designed by TP Bennett, will run entirely on renewable electricity. To reduce the reliance on fossil fuels, the use of gas was eliminated from the buildings and an all electric solution was deployed. This required the use of a heat pump system to replace gas fired boilers as well as air-cooled chillers.
Other sustainable features include triple glazing to minimise heat loss, as well as a highly efficient curtain walling and efficient ventilation. The room has solar panels which will generate its own electricity from a renewable energy tariff, meeting the requirements of UKGBC net zero carbon operational energy standard.
11 and 12 Wellington Place are ten and eleven storeys high and are connected by a link bridge. The steel frame design reduces embodied carbon by offering large spans that reduce the need for concrete columns and the number of piles. During construction Easi-Edge supplied over 4,600 LM of edge protection barriers.
The use of offsite manufacturing for the steel frame also helped to reduce carbon during construction. The use of cellular beams has made the building lighter and more cost-effective. This phase of the Wellington Place development is expected to play a big part in attracting major players to the city, as Leeds continues to prove its position in the Northern Powerhouse.
