CASE STUDY | BURRELL COLLECTION More than 3,120m2 of double glazing was removed and recycled during the refurbishment of the Burrell Collection The Grade A-listed Burrell Collection houses important works of art, but poor fabric performance had made the museum unsustainable. Andy Pearson explains how the buildings glazed faade was restored to make the gallery fit for a low carbon future A GLAZING SUCCESS PROJECT TEAM Client: Glasgow Life Architect: John McAslan and Partners Building services, re, environmental engineer and Breeam: Atelier Ten Civil and structural engineer: David Narro Associates Main contractor: Kier MEP contractor: FESx T he greenest building is... one that is already built. This phrase, attributed to Carl Elefante, former president of the American Institute of Architects, may well be true for the newly refurbished Burrell Collection building, in Glasgows Pollok Country Park. Green, however, was not an epithet that could have been levelled at the Grade A-listed art gallery before its refurbishment. Originally opened in 1983, as the new home for the art collection donated to Glasgow by shipping magnate Sir William Burrell, the building was suffering from a myriad of issues, the most significant of which was its failing envelope. Its faults After we found out that the building couldnt hold pressure, we got really paranoid and re-engineered the heating and cooling batteries to cope with a leakage figure of 15m-.m-.h- @50Pa were consistent with a building of its time: low levels of insulation; a leaking roof; poor airtightness; and high solar gains, from expanses of south-facing glass, putting a heavy strain on cooling systems. The faults were so bad, that the museum was no longer able to provide a suitable home for the art collection. In 2016, Glasgow City Council appointed building services consultant Atelier Ten, architect John McAslan and Partners, and Arup Faades as part of 68.25m project to refurbish and improve the Burrell. It was a fairly unsustainable museum to operate, in terms of cost and so on, and the building services were pretty much shot, says David Cameron, director at Atelier Ten. Our brief was to revive the building to make it more sustainable from an economic, social and environmental perspective. Improving the envelope of the building was key to the success of the refurbishment. We started by writing a brief for Alba, who went to site and did a thermographic survey, as well as general resistance tests, to determine the current fabric performance, 30 October 2022 www.cibsejournal.com CIBSE Oct 22 pp30-33 Burrell Collection.indd 30 26/09/2022 17:37