Horizon House formerly known as Cabot House

The existing Cabot House building is to be demolished recycled on site and used in the construction of the new Horizon House. Maintaining the environmental theme the new Horizon House will be one of Bristol greenest office developments. Horizon House is an important development for Bristol as it will revitalise a key central location of the City. It will set the bar for the environmental quality of future developments.

Westmark, the developer for the site has secured the Environmental Agency as a tenant which not only validates the “Green Credentials” of the building but also provides key employment opportunities for the region. The development will be a mixed use scheme which includes 70,000sq ft of offices space spread over five floors which will be occupied by the Environment Agency, and 79 apartments some of which will be affordable housing.

The schemes eco-friendly features will include natural ventilation, solar panels, and ground source heat pumps (extracting heat from the ground). This will help to keep running costs to a minimum.

Having carried out an extensive Value Engineering process on the Building Services element of the project with the rest of the design and construction team MJN Colston are now responsible for the mechanical and electrical installation to both buildings. Specialist features of the service installation include Solar collection to provide preheat to the domestic Hot Water system. Photovoltaic collection to provide renewable energy to the buildings LV system.

The mechanical systems include a mixed mode form of ventilation through manual and automatic openable windows and Fan Coil Units with energy efficient EC motors.

This project recently picked up the BREEAM 2010 Award for Commercial Offices and has been awarded a BREEAM rating of “excellent”.

Project Team

  • Client - Westmark Developments Ltd
  • Main Contractor - Sir Robert McAlpine
  • Architect - Alec French
  • Services Engineers - Hoare Lea Partners
  • Quantity Surveyors - King Sturge
  • Services Value - £4.5m

The electrical installation includes and intelligent lighting control system to reduce the energy consumption of the lighting system.