With two popular and prestigious universities, Leeds has a student population of around 38,000, many of whom want to live in purpose-built student accommodation in the heart of the city. A new development from leading student living developer, Vita Student, has provided that opportunity for metropolitan lifestyles, while complementing the heritage of the surrounding built environment, thanks to an A1-rated non-combustible SureClad® Natural Stone façade from cladding specialist, Shackerley.
Local Heritage
The Vita Student development is located in the heart of Leeds’ Civic Quarter, close Leeds Town Hall and Leeds Civic Hall; two of the Portland Stone jewels in the city’s architectural crown. Originally designed and partially constructed as a hotel, the project was acquired by the developer when the concrete frame was in progress. Architectural and Interior Design practice Fuse Studios, was tasked with updating the design to convert the hotel project to luxury student accommodation. The revised scheme comprises 312 studio apartments within a 16-storey building, with amenity and retail accommodation on the lower floors and planning permission needed to be achieved for the updated design.
Director of Fuse Studios, Simon Clarke explains: “The use of natural stone as the main façade material had always been a local planning aspiration because of the location of the building and its proximity to heritage landmarks. The revised design needed to adhere to this and the planners were very clear that the façade had to be genuine stone with natural colour and tonal variation, rather than a veneer or engineered stone substitute.
“Our aim was to achieve the authentic façade materiality the planners were looking for to provide the appearance, texture and quality of Portland Stone, while considering the buildability, structural loading and cost implications of the façade.”
As the original design has been converted from a hotel to provide residential accommodation more than 18m tall, fire safety was also an important consideration of the specification. Shackerley’s SureClad® Natural Stone is classified as A1 non-combustible to BS EN 13501-1.
A Sample to Confirm the Spec
Having worked with Shackerley on previous projects, the Fuse team approached the rainscreen cladding specialist to discuss stone façade options for the project. The Shackerley team was able to propose a SureClad® natural limestone that complements the colour, tone and texture of nearby buildings, without incurring the cost and consistency issues associated with Portland Stone.
To help gain approval from the developer and the local planning office, Shackerley produced sample panels at one of the company’s ISO 9001 accredited factories in Lancashire and Façade installation specialist, Keyclad Limited, constructed a 3m x 4.5m section of wall on site in Leeds. This demonstrated what the limestone material would look like in situ and how the four standard panel sizes would be used to create variation. The client and the planning officers were also able to inspect the quality of the SureClad® Natural Stone cladding system, which consists of 20mm panels of solid limestone, supplied in four standard large format sizes, along with more than 30 additional panel sizes to fit between windows.
Simon Clarke continues: “Constructing such a large area of façade on site enabled everyone to see how the SureClad® façade panels would look like on the finished building, which highlighted how well they fit in the architectural context and provided a taster of the interplay with light and public realm surroundings that would be achieved by the finished building.
“The sample wall area also demonstrated that, although the panels are slim and lightweight, they are high quality and robust, offering a long-lasting solution with an enduring natural stone aesthetic.”
Creating Contrast
To contrast with the light beige colour of the main limestone façade panels, Fuse Studios also selected a black granite façade material for the lower floors, in the same ‘honed’ finish, which reiterates the natural source of the material.
Simon Clarke continues: “The use of the dark SureClad® granite system, along with extensive glazing, at the lower levels establishes a visual separation between the student amenity space and the residential accommodation above.
“The contrast also creates an optical illusion of the limestone façades ‘floating’ above a void, which draws attention to the lighter coloured stone.”
Non-sequential Installation
The SureClad® cladding panels for both the limestone and granite sections of the façade were manufactured to order at one of Shackerley’s Lancashire factories, with phased production aligned to the installation schedule. Keyclad Limited worked closely with the team at Shackerley to ensure the right product was on site throughout the tight programme.
Peter O’Brien, contracts manager at Keyclad Limited comments: “In such a busy city centre location, site storage and deliveries were limited so it was essential that we had the right panels each week to keep the programme on track. Shackerley manufactured the panels and stored them for us, so we were able to call off the consignments we needed a week ahead of time and have them delivered to site on a just-in-time basis.”
Keyclad Limited used Shackerley’s Queens Award winning SureClad® Access installation system for the project, which helped the team to manage the programme with non-sequential installation.
Peter continues: “We used mast climbers to carry out the installation and were able to work around them, returning to the mast climber positions to complete the façade in these areas once they had been removed. The whole thing ran very smoothly, helped by excellent communication and efficient systems from Shackerley.”
A New Landmark
With its distinctive shape, classic stone material and prominent location, The Vita Student development in Leeds has created a new landmark for the city. A total of 3924m2 of SureClad® Natural Stone limestone was used to create the façade, along with 125m2 of honed black granite panels, and the project builds on Shackerley’s wide ranging portfolio in the student accommodation sector, which includes a previous Vita Student project in Edinburgh.
