The building created to house the School of Slavonic Studies at University College, London, is the latest of Short Associates designs to use natural ventilation for a large building. It is the first time that passive down-draft cooling has been used on a public building in a major city. The thermal mass of the masonry of the main elevation and the staircase zone behind it allows the stair void to act as a huge ventilated cavity. This tempers the building's internal temperatures working in conjunction with the central glass atrium that rises through the middle of the building, the perimeter stacks and roof-mounted chimneys.
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