£36m state of the art ‘green’ office development in Salford named
The name of a striking 12-storey office block being built in New Bailey, Salford has been revealed.
Eden is the ambitious flagship development being developed by The English Cities Fund, a joint venture between urban regenerator Muse Developments, Legal & General and Homes England.
The 115,000 sq ft development will feature Europe’s biggest living wall – a stunning array of plants, insect hotels and bird nesting boxes.
It will be built to the UK Green Building Council’s 2035-2050 Design for Performance standard and is set for completion in 2023.
The scheme is planned to be a 5.5-star NABARS UK scheme, the first of its kind in the UK.
Eden is the latest office building being delivered in Salford by the ECF development partnership, and forms part of the wider £1bn Salford Central masterplan, being delivered by the partnership.
The building will feature enhanced, demand-controlled ventilation with O2 monitoring, and will be fossil fuel free with air source heat pumps generating heating, cooling and hot water.
Phil Marsden, project director at Muse Developments, said: “Eden is designed to be net zero carbon in operation, achieving the UKGBC interim energy intensity targets for operational energy – and this is where we believe Eden will have another advantage: some building projects in design stages which have suddenly changed focus to become more carbon-efficient have struggled to find the resource to go carbon-efficient in both constructing and operating those buildings.
Eden scheme in Salford
“It’s vital that these requirements are embedded into the brief from the very start.
“But this is not just about carbon – we have also thought hard about increasing biodiversity, and we have Europe’s biggest living wall – with the overwhelming majority of the non-glazed elements of the façade to be covered by 350,000 plants.
“The living wall provides real environmental benefits by removing toxins from the atmosphere, creating a significant increase in bio-diversity, providing habitat for birds, butterflies and pollinators, and also improves the thermal performance of the building.”
He added: “We are all contributors to change for the better, and we each have to start somewhere: Eden is as apt a name as any to describe both a start and a target for a more sustainable future.”
