ABSTRACT
The Queens Building at De Montfort University, shown in Figure 13.1, which houses the school of engineering and manufacture, is one of the most exciting and innovative buildings to have been built in Europe in the last few years. The building represents a major shift from the tradition of university buildings that has grown up over the past 20 to 30 years. The design strategy chosen has been to look to the solutions of the past then, applying modern technology, to refine these solutions and make them the way to the future. In particular, the building has been designed to function without the use of air conditioning in spite of high internal heat gains in lecture theatres and computer laboratories. The result at De Montfort is a building that is wholly modern with a strong bias towards lowenergy design which, with its red brick construction, fits well into the traditional Leicester cityscape.
