Gillian Moore

Warn­er Street in St Au­gus­tine has been the ad­dress of breezy bun­ga­lows for uni­ver­si­ty per­son­nel for decades. Now, amidst the samaans, shade trees, flow­er­ing shrubs and grassy back­yards, stands a new build­ing, one which makes its pres­ence felt with­out up­set­ting the idyl­lic sur­round­ings. The new green and white block­work struc­ture, the Health Eco­nom­ics Unit (HEU), at 25a Warn­er Street, is the lat­est of a string of achieve­ments for Jenifer Smith Ar­chi­tects Ltd (JSA). "The build­ing is sit­u­at­ed on a plot which was orig­i­nal­ly oc­cu­pied by a sin­gle fam­i­ly dwelling with a large gar­den, typ­i­cal of the hous­ing pro­vid­ed for pro­fes­sors and lec­tur­ers at UWI when it was the Im­pe­r­i­al Col­lege of Agri­cul­ture in the 1940s. "The orig­i­nal house was de­mol­ished many years ago and UWI con­struct­ed sin­gle-storey tem­po­rary of­fices, which are still there.

"How­ev­er, there was room for a build­ing to be con­struct­ed on the east­ern side of the plot. This area was al­lo­cat­ed by UWI for the new HEU build­ing. "Rather than con­ceiv­ing this build­ing as a stand-alone de­sign, we con­sid­ered what the best use of the en­tire site would be, giv­en that, in time, the tem­po­rary build­ings would be de­mol­ished, leav­ing the west­ern end to be de­vel­oped. "The idea was to even­tu­al­ly cre­ate an open-sided quad­ran­gle. So the new build­ing was de­vel­oped in an 'L' shape. In time, this foot­print could be mir­rored, cre­at­ing a cen­tral court­yard on to Warn­er Street. "The short­er side of the 'L' hous­es a con­fer­ence cen­tre and the longer side, three floors of ad­min­is­tra­tion and train­ing spaces," Smith said.

Build­ing bet­ter

With the con­struc­tion in­dus­try, of late, fac­ing crit­i­cism about be­ing able to de­liv­er projects them with­in bud­get and on time, Smith said the HEU build­ing is es­pe­cial­ly no­table, hav­ing been suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed on time and with­in tight fi­nan­cial con­straints. The HEU build­ing con­struct­ed by lo­cal con­trac­tor, Al­pha En­gi­neer­ing (2001) Ltd. Smith is es­pe­cial­ly proud of this project. Con­struc­tion start­ed in April 2008 and was com­plet­ed in Ju­ly 2009. "It demon­strates that this ap­proach to the de­sign and pro­cure­ment of a pub­lic build­ing–where the ar­chi­tect, struc­tur­al en­gi­neer, ser­vices en­gi­neer and quan­ti­ty sur­vey­or work close­ly to­geth­er to pro­duce a com­pre­hen­sive and co-or­di­nat­ed set of draw­ings and spec­i­fi­ca­tions based on a de­fined brief–can re­sult in a build­ing de­sign which can be con­struct­ed on time and to bud­get." The Cen­tre for Health Eco­nom­ics was es­tab­lished by Prof Karl Theodore at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies. The project, which cost $22 mil­lion, was part­ly fi­nanced by the World Bank, a Pan­Car­ibbean Part­ner­ship Against HIV/Aids (PAN­CAP) grant, and the Gov­ern­ment.

About the HEU de­sign

The struc­ture com­pris­es three floors. The ground floor will be used for HEU ad­min­is­tra­tion. The first floor is for HEU train­ing and the third floor is ad­di­tion­al of­fice space to be used by an­oth­er UWI de­part­ment. There is al­so a con­fer­ence cen­tre on the ground floor, which can be booked as a pub­lic venue to pro­vide an in­come stream for the HEU. "We al­so be­lieve firm­ly that a build­ing which meets and even ex­ceeds ex­pec­ta­tions is al­so a re­flec­tion of the par­tic­i­pa­tion and role of the client. In this case, we were able to work close­ly with Cam­pus Projects Of­fice (CPO) at UWI, which has a great deal of ex­pe­ri­ence and which al­ways main­tained a pos­i­tive and pro­fes­sion­al ap­proach. "In ad­di­tion, the gen­er­al con­trac­tor took a part­ner­ing ap­proach to the con­struc­tion of this build­ing. Very of­ten con­trac­tors bid de­lib­er­ate­ly low on in­com­plete in­for­ma­tion to win a job and then fo­cus most of their en­er­gies on mak­ing claims to com­pen­sate. This is why time and re­sources are bet­ter spent be­fore ac­tu­al con­struc­tion starts; to en­sure that in­for­ma­tion is com­pre­hen­sive and claims are there­fore lim­it­ed to a min­i­mum. "CPO un­der­stood that process and al­lowed for it."

Green is­sues

In­te­grat­ed in­to the de­sign are sev­er­al fea­tures in­te­gral to the over­all aes­thet­ic of the build­ing, which are re­lat­ed to re­duc­ing so­lar gain/heat load. These fea­tures in­clude ex­ter­nal sun-shad­ing de­vices and over­hangs. The win­dows are all dou­ble-glazed to re­duce en­er­gy con­sump­tion. Win­dows to all the of­fices can be opened in the event of pow­er fail­ure. The de­sign al­so was done to re­tain all of the ex­ist­ing trees on site. New trees were al­so plant­ed to pro­vide ad­di­tion­al shade. Grass­crete was used in­stead of tar­mac for the park­ing ar­eas, al­low­ing for per­co­la­tion of rain­wa­ter. Low-en­er­gy fix­tures and fit­tings, such as the type of car­pet, were used wher­ev­er pos­si­ble.

About Jenifer Smith

Jenifer Smith Ar­chi­tects Ltd, prin­ci­pal ar­chi­tect Jenifer Smith, 48, grad­u­at­ed from the pres­ti­gious Bartlett School of Ar­chi­tec­ture, Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege, Lon­don, and qual­i­fied in 1987. She worked with a small Lon­don firm, Arm­strong As­so­ciates, be­fore mov­ing on to work in Paris, where she be­came a mem­ber of the Or­dre des Ar­chi­tectes in 1991.

Mov­ing back to Lon­don in 1998, she start­ed her own com­pa­ny, tak­ing on high-end res­i­den­tial and leisure fa­cil­i­ties. Af­ter a few years, the de­sire to be­come in­volved in more civic and pub­lic projects led her to move back home to Trinidad, where she was raised and where her fam­i­ly still lives. For the last nine years, she's made her mark as an ar­chi­tect, win­ning Abel-Best­crete Caribbean Build­ing Awards in 2006 for Best In­dus­tri­al Build­ing and Best In­di­vid­ual House, and work­ing on such pub­lic and ed­u­ca­tion­al build­ings as the orig­i­nal de­sign for Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T's O'Meara cam­pus; which was short-list­ed for the best ed­u­ca­tion­al fa­cil­i­ty award.