SMEATON
BUILDING,
PLYMOUTH

Sector
Education

Architect
Kendall Kingscott

Contractor
Ryearch Construction

Location
Plymouth

Contact the team: west@radiiplanet.com 01249 448 920

THE PROJECT.

The Smeaton Building houses the University of Plymouth’s Faculty of Science and Engineering on its city centre campus. A phased refurbishment of the first floor was commissioned to create teaching facilities for Cyber Security, Web Services, Games Development, Artificial Intelligence, High Performance Computing and Technical Support.

Our western team was appointed on the second phase, remodelling the eastern end of the floor with Kendall Kingscott and Ryearch Construction.

Solid corridor walls came out and glazed partitioning went in, forming a run of computer labs and a large open social learning suite — delivered to a fixed handover in readiness for the new academic year.

OUR SOLUTION.

The corridor is the spine of the floor, and every line of it had to hold thirty minutes of fire integrity without closing the labs off from view. FirePro EI30 acoustic butt-jointed screens (Rw 39 dB) answer both, running the length of the corridor with the minimum of framing so the glazed line reads as continuous rather than divided.

The EI30 rating covers both integrity and insulation, tested bi-directionally so the screens perform whichever side a fire starts. Radiant heat is held back as well as flame and smoke, keeping the corridor passable for the full thirty minutes and protecting the escape route that serves every lab on the floor.

Access into teaching spaces is through FirePro EI30 single leaf doors, with double leaf doors at the principal circulation points. Framework throughout is finished in an Iron Grey, holding a consistent tone across the floor and letting the activity inside each room take the foreground.

What was once a corridor of closed doors now reads as a single connected floor, with each lab visible from the circulation route that serves it.