Unity Place: Swindon's most sustainable office
A £39m headquarters for Zurich Insurance, where every material decision counted toward BREEAM Excellent.
The Unity Place atrium looking straight up, six floors of Rockfon Eclipse circular acoustic islands absorbing sound across the full height of the space.
Designing the city’s most sustainable office
When Zurich Insurance committed £39m to a new six-storey headquarters in Swindon, the brief was clear: build the most sustainable office the city has ever seen.
Designed by Alec French Architects with Skanska as main contractor, Unity Place runs entirely on renewable electricity. Cycling facilities, energy-efficient lighting, a rooftop beehive, furniture made partly from recovered ocean plastics. Nothing was chosen without a reason.
The target was BREEAM Excellent, a certification that would place Unity Place in the top ten percent of non-residential buildings in the UK for sustainability. Every material in the building, including the acoustic ceiling, had to contribute.
A minimal interior with no acoustic plan.
Alec French Architects designed the interior around a minimal industrial aesthetic: full-height window walls, exposed hard surfaces and a limited colour palette throughout. It gives the building a strong visual character, but glass, concrete and hard wall finishes reflect sound rather than absorbing it.
In a busy open plan office, that means reverberation builds quickly, conversations carry across the floor, and background noise makes it harder to concentrate.
Across six floors of open offices, stairways, restrooms and a multi-storey atrium, each space needed an acoustic solution suited to its specific use, within budget, within the design language, and contributing credits toward the BREEAM certification.
With 3,800m² to cover and six very different types of space to address, getting the specification right across every floor was the real challenge.
Project info
Project name
Zurich Insurance Unity Place
Location
Swindon, United Kingdom
Architecture
Installation
Contractor
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3800 square metres of Rockfon acoustic solutions were installed in various formats and dimensions throughout Unity Place.
The right product for each space
Rockfon Eclipse frameless acoustic islands in Square, Rectangle and Circle formats were installed across the open office floors, absorbing sound in busy open plan areas while maintaining the minimal ceiling aesthetic the architects specified.
Under the stairways, Rockfon Color-all in Charcoal was installed using ‘secret’ fixings, keeping the finish visually clean in a space where detail is clearly visible from multiple angles.
In the restrooms, Rockfon Medicare tiles provide Class A sound absorption alongside the hygiene performance and cleanability that welfare facilities require.
In the reception area, Rockfon Contour, vertical acoustic panels suspended from the ceiling, manage the noise from high foot traffic, entry gates and reception calls in a space with floor-to-ceiling glass on multiple sides.
Rockfon Blanka in two variants completed the specification across the remaining areas, with its deep-matte white surface maximising light reflection and diffusion throughout.
Every product contributed credits toward the BREEAM Excellent rating through acoustic performance, raw material credentials, recycling potential and high light reflection values.
Installed with fixings under stairways are Rockfon Color-all tiles in Charcoal.
A hallway with Rockfon Eclipse ceiling islands in the Rectangle shape.
Rockfon MediCare Standard tiles fulfill hygiene requirements in the bathrooms.
“We’re proud that this development has delivered the first new office space in the heart of Swindon in a generation, and it’s in a state-of-the-art, sustainable building.”
Charlie Norris
— Operations Director at Skanska
Rockfon Contour ceiling baffles absorbing sound in the reception area, where floor-to-ceiling glass and constant foot traffic would otherwise make noise control difficult.
A custom atrium installation
The multi-storey atrium required more than a standard installation. A custom parallel suspension rail system had to be developed for the north side of the building, and crane access was needed for the high-level ceiling work throughout the space.
"This was challenging and ultimately very rewarding. We had to research a new system using parallel suspension rails. The crane necessary for high level installations within the atrium tested the team's skills and fortitude," said Scott Dunn, Site Manager at installer Topfix Interiors.
BREEAM Excellent. Top 10% in the UK.
Unity Place achieved BREEAM Excellent at design stage and is targeting post-completion certification that would place it in the top ten percent of non-residential buildings in the UK for sustainability.
For Zurich Insurance, it means a headquarters that finally matches fifty years of commitment to the city, and gives 1,000 employees a workplace built to last.
Also specifying acoustic ceilings for a building targeting a sustainability certification? Get in touch, and together we'll make sure every product earns its place.
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