Kingfisher Louvres - SEE Building, University of Salford

Opened in 2022, the University of Salford’s new School of Science, Engineering and Environment (SEE) has a striking, modern design. This four-storey building, which forms part of a wider campus masterplan, is a multi-disciplinary hub for teaching, research and industry collaboration.

Kingfisher Louvres have taken pride of place on the roof of the university’s flagship science building. The unique design of this £65m development, covering 15,300m² over four storeys was completed by Sheppard Robson and developed by Morgan Sindall Construction.

Louvres were needed to screen the plant equipment on the roof whilst also complementing the aesthetics of this eye-catching building.

The solution

Over two hundred metres of five-metre high KC120 screening louvres were supplied to our customer, Metclad, to provide a screen for the rooftop plant equipment without compromising the building’s unique design.

The louvre blades were supplied inverted, meaning that the plant equipment behind the screen would be concealed when viewed from below. It is common practice for blades to be inverted in rooftop applications given that ‘line of sight’ is essential when designing plant screens. This differs from typical weather louvre applications, where the orientation will always be standard downward-facing blades, as this will offer better weathering performance and is the orientation weather systems would be tested with.

This screen on the SEE building also includes a number of mitred corners which further enhances the continuous appearance of the louvres around the perimeter of the plant equipment. Kingfisher supply fully mitred corners as standard for their louvres, for both internal and external corner applications, for a range of angles, not just standard 90° corners.

In addition to mitred corners, Kingfisher door sets were used to promote the continuous appearance of the louvre system. In total, Kingfisher supplied nine door sets for this project, which were installed within the louvre screens for access purposes, and included at least one door set on each elevation.

Josh Gardner, purchasing manager at Metclad commented “We have used Kingfisher for several years now and are constantly impressed with their quality of service and products.”