The new National Centre in Milton Keynes is a key element in Network Rail’s strategy for delivering a railway fit for the 21st Century. Their brief to the consultant team calls for a building to facilitate new working practices necessary to achieve the challenging targets set by the Office of Rail Regulation, while also meeting exacting environmental standards.

Network Rail is keen to ensure that the project delivers an efficient environment that will energize and motivate their workforce. However, as a government-funded organization with a high profile, it is also essential the project achieves good value for money under both government and media scrutiny.

The project team have addressed these issues with an innovative and honest design intended to catalyse the required transformation in working practices and which has achieved an ‘Excellent’ rating against BREEAM (2008).

The design responds to the proportions of the site and the massing parameters set out by the Milton Keynes development guidelines. The offices are divided into four blocks, which are set out at an angle to the street line. This creates a spatial dynamic, both in relationship to the public realm and in the area between the blocks.

This alignment, together with exterior solar shading panels, will reduce heat gain, improve the efficiency of natural ventilation and allow effective use of natural light.

The area between the offices will be enclosed to form a large atrium and will unite all four blocks. This will create a focus for the National Centre and will house the main reception, a coffee bar and retail outlets, together with space for informal meetings and socialising. The ground levels of the office blocks will provide support facilities including a staff restaurant, a specialist library and a gymnasium.

The upper floors are planned to achieve efficient use of the space and to support Network Rail’s ambitions for integrated teamwork. The layouts are designed to cope with the ‘churn’ inevitably associated with flexibility.

High-level bridges will link the individual blocks to aid circulation and reduce lift usage.

In the office areas, natural ventilation will be augmented by passive cooling, while energy requirements will be met by power and heating from the local district energy scheme.

The building will have a ‘brown roof’, a concept with similar benefits to the ‘green roof’, but which puts the emphasis on indigenous species and biodiversity.