The Wing is the Battle of Britain Memorial Trust’s new visitor and education centre situated alongside the National Memorial to the Few, in Capel-le-Ferne, Kent.
The building construction is based on the shape of Spitfire wings; one wing houses an immersive multi-media experience based around the events of the Battle of Britian; the other is designed to provide an educational space in which to inform and inspire future generations. On the first floor is a café and open decked area providing views over the cliffs and across the sea.
CJ Design were appointed as MEP designer on the project. They researched the most appropriate sustainable solutions for the HVAC services to ensure that the required BREEAM excellent target was achieved.
Space heating was provided via an underfloor heating system throughout the ground floor and radiators on the first, with heat provided by an air source heat pump and high efficiency condensing boiler. The air conditioning system was based on a VRF system with ventilation supplied by four air handling units with heat recovery. Due to the large volumes of air involved the use of heat recovery was vital to keeping the energy demand of the building down. It also made use of the significant amount of heat produced in the multi-media space that would have otherwise been wasted.

The controls of the heating and air conditioning systems were carefully co-ordinated to enable both to work with optimum efficiency but without overlap, eliminating a situation whereby the heating would effectively be ‘fighting’ the air conditioning. The result being a BREEAM compliant, highly energy efficient solution, that provided appropriate heating and ventilation to the spaces throughout the building, contributing to the BREEAM Excellent status being obtained at the end of the project.