FTF Group Climate has delivered Active Multi-Service Chilled Beams (MSCB’s) to the award winning building R7, Kings Cross, London, UK (Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) London Award 2018 and RIBA National Award 2018) having worked closely with the design teams to produce an engineering solution that meet the various demands of the HVAC system while also satisfying architectural inspirations.

Building R7 is a 10 Storey mixed-use building in Kings Cross, London, which consists of ground floor retail and 9-floor levels of commercial office space totaling approximately 155,000 sq ft.

FTF Group's Active Multi-Service Chilled Beam (MSCB) units were selected by Kier after several months of in-house performance and room occupancy thermal comfort testing at FTF Group's technical facility, Pride Park, Derby. FTF Group have 3x Climatic Test Labs, 2x Photometric Lighting Labs and 1x Acoustic Lab in-house in which they simulated the indoor environment to Category B compliance of BS EN ISO 7730 for thermal comfort for both Cooling and Heating.

The acoustics of single MSCB were tested and witnessed at less than NR20 which provide for a building operation less than NR30, FTF Group even tested Honeywell’s PA VA speakers which were to be concealed in FTF Group's MSCB unit in conjunction with Honeywell.

FTF Group in-house produced and tested extruded polycarbonate square edge LED luminaries to provide an average of 450 Lux on the working plane with a UGR (Unified Glare Rating) of less than 19 for the project that consisted in a multi-million-pound order from Kier to FTF Group for the supply of their Multi-Service Chilled Beam units.

The benefits of Chilled Beam technology are widely known and accepted as being the most energy efficient HVAC solutions, with superior room occupancy thermal comfort, long life expectancy, minimal maintenance, which left only ‘office flexibility’ to satisfy for this ‘speculative’ building to be appropriate for any sector. Each office floor-plate is to be split into four different demises, facilitating more flexible letting areas if the market dictates.

By working closely to Kiers requests FTF Group achieved the future cellularisation from a base build (Cat A) to multi-tenanted (Cat B) requirements. Removable joining infill sections enabled partitions to intersect the MSCB units and the internal ‘through piping’ enabled separate room control of cellular offices.

This building R7 achieved a BREEAM rating of ‘Outstanding’ and was let by big names such as New Look and then taken by no less than Google.