Architecture

Apex House creates an ‘L’ shape of two flanking wings creating a street frontage to Albion Way and Fulton Road and linking in with the neighbouring buildings. The corner forms a landmark tower, and contains the single lift and stair core serving the building. The façade is finished with terracotta tiling with aluminium cladding infill panels for the flanking wings and polished Glass-Reinforced Concrete with aluminium cladding infill panels for the tower. The colours of the wings blend in with the neighbouring buildings, and the tower is a dramatic white that accentuates its verticality.

The cellular nature of student housing makes it ideal for volumetric construction as each room is provided with an en-suite bathroom. All rooms are delivered to site fully finished with even the bed installed, to a high quality of finish with all the services located on the corridor side of the units making them quick to install and easy to maintain. HTA designed the project in Revit from the outset and coordinated the model with the other disciplines. The 679 units installed in Apex were manufactured at Vision’s factory in Bedford in a process similar to that used on a car production line. Every module is traced from start to finish in the production process to ensure a full audit trail is captured. The units were delivered by truck to site, using a small buffer site nearby to store modules temporarily.

Each unit is craned into position in a ten minute period and then fixed into position by a specialist installation team. At its peak, eleven units were being installed per day, which is the equivalent of four one-bed and one two-bedroom apartments. An innovative mix for the GRC panels was used to meet our desire to increase the visual quality of the GRC material. It also meant that the finish of the panels was more robust and hard-wearing and would need less maintenance over its lifetime.