Located on Devon County Council’s business park just off the A39 link road, Node Cowork provides a dynamic workspace designed to support the growth of local start-ups within the region. It offers a range of workspaces from offices and meeting rooms, to teleconferencing booths which support the Work Near Home movement, providing a professional space in which employees can operate effectively outside of major cities.
The project is receiving up to £2,932,162 of funding from the England European Regional Development Fund as part of the European Structural and Investment Funds Growth Programme 2014-2020.
In addition to its innovative collaborative spaces and workshops, the building has also been designed to lead the way in energy and environmental performance. It incorporates a wide range of features from recycling facilities and bike storage to a large photovoltaic (PV) array, allowing it to achieve a BREEAM rating of ‘Excellent’.
Fabric-led
TownSq and Devon County Council have developed the spaces within the Node Cowork scheme based on extensive research into how different working spaces can help to improve collaboration and productivity. This same research-based approach contributed to a fabric-led specification, which will help to reduce the heating demand for the building and help it to achieve a number of credits in the energy performance section of the BREEAM assessment, along with an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) rating of B.
A 70 mm thickness of Kooltherm K103 was installed across the ground floor of the office development. The product offers outstanding insulation performance with a thermal conductivity of just 0.019 W/mK across all thicknesses. This allowed the project team to achieve a low U-value with a slimmer thickness of insulation than would have been possible with other solutions, helping to limit groundwork depths.
A further 120 mm thickness of Kingspan GreenGuard GG300 was also installed as part of the flat roof construction. The product’s extruded polystyrene core provides a high compressive stress, typically exceeding 300 kPa (at 10% compression). This makes it suitable for installation in areas of the roof where occasional foot traffic may be expected, supporting simple long-term maintenance.
Responsible manufacturing
In addition to contributing towards the award of credits as part of the ENE01 section of the BREEAM assessment, the products also supported efforts to achieve responsible sourcing credits. Kooltherm K103 boards manufactured at our site in Pembridge and Kingspan GreenGuard boards manufactured at our facility in Selby are produced under a management system certified to ISO 14001 (Environmental Management Systems). The Kingspan GreenGuard production line has a 100% recycled waste stream.
