Royal College of Arts, UK

The new Herzog & De Meuron flagship building of the Royal College of Art’s Battersea campus, will mark an important step in the evolution of the RCA into a STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics)- focused post-graduate university. The building will house facilities for a range of art, design and innovation programs, including laboratories for computers, robotics wearing technologies, material science and advanced manufacturing. Additionally, space will be allocated to host start-up businesses as part of the Innovation RCA incubator program. The façade building includes a cladding composed of two type of panels, such as curved panels located in front of the opaque façade areas and perpendicularly orientated fins shading glazed façade areas. In light of the type of solar shading elements, a risk assessment of the potential tonality of vortex shedding from the interaction between the façade components and the wind has been undertaken. The review involved the assessment of the façade solar shading in terms of fins and curved panels’ dimension, shape and the spacing between them, in order to establish the potential issues that they could cause with the interaction with wind. Following the comparison between the fundamental frequency of the façade elements determined through a structural analysis and the aerodynamic noise frequency, the level of risk of a tonal noise to be generated has been established.