OUR LATEST CASE STUDY FOR DOWNLOAD - THE SILVERSTONE WING
« Moorfoot Primary School, Midlothian »
Tuesday, February 2, 2010 at 5:38AM 
Ash & Lacy provided over 32,000sqm of AshZip standing seam roofing, along with AshFix fasteners and AshFab fabrications, to seven schools in Scotland. The Midlothian Schools PPP scheme was a council initiative to provide seven new community primary schools for the Midlothian area. Midlothian Council & 'Midlothian Schools Ltd' teamed up to provide the £41.19 million for the Public Private Partnership initiative scheme.
The brief stated that the schools must engage with the community itself and be sensitive to its surroundings, whether within the peripheral landscape surrounding a village, or the heart of its residential area. The buildings themselves also had to demonstrate civic status, but without overpowering the scale of the surrounding domestic buildings. Finally, a child friendly and inspiring environment in which to learn was a key specification.
Aedas Architects (Scotland), alongside Ash & Lacy, answered this brief. Several of the schools in conservation areas feature green roofs and all have contemporary roof lights to allow natural light to flood into the learning environment and create a light and airy interior.
AshZip roofing lends itself perfectly to these applications. As a completely leak-proof zipped roofing solution with few surface penetrations, it provides an effective sustainable base for the growing mediums which form the green roof. AshZip can also be easily manipulated to fit around features such as roof lights, with no risk of leakage.
Ash & Lacy's supply partners BBS Green Roofing installed the growing medium and sedum for the enviro-roofs. A bespoke lightweight system has since been designed for Ash & Lacy. The saturated weight of most sustainable roofing systems is 100kg or more per m². BBS has specifically designed the lightest sedum system on the market for Ash & Lacy, at half the saturated weight of 56kg per m², yet providing the same finish and aesthetic qualities of other systems.
This has a beneficial knock-on effect for the standing seam under layer, eliminating sagging and allowing 400mm modules, as opposed to the usual 300mm to be installed. This reduces the amount of AshZip which in conjunction with the lighter sedum mat results in a much more cost effective sustainable roofing system and potential savings on purlins and steelwork sizes.
The green roofs themselves offer teaching opportunities for pupils in areas of flora, fauna, geography and sustainability, as well as helping preserve the former green-field sites upon which the schools are built.
Brian McArthur, Aedas Architects (Scotland), commented 'We specified Ash & Lacy's AshZip standing seam roofing as it enabled us to meet the strict planning requirements, within budget and allow us to create individual, unique and distinctive primary schoolsthe children (and teachers!) are really happy with their new school'. Midlothian Schools PPP won the 'Environmental' category in the Ash & Lacy Awards '08. The judges were particularly impressed with how the project 'demonstrated a regionalspecific architecture with a common architectural language and site specific designs'.
The project itself came about after an extensive assessment of Midlothian schools carried out by Midlothian Council. It was decided that new school environments, equipped to teach children in the 21st century were required, as well as to cope with the predicted 12% population growth of Midlothian over the next few years.
Councillor Peter Boyes, Cabinet Member for Education and Lifelong Learning added: "These new primary schools have been designed to provide an exciting learning and teaching environment which will allow progressive development of learning from nursery to primary seven. Clusters of classrooms, with sliding partitions, built around an atrium, provide distinct teaching areas, which also include an outside classroom area. All the schools have multi-use games areas and it is hoped that these will be available for use by the wider community outwith school times."