Quarantine House

The project is the provision of a new containment and quarantine facility at the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew. This was the first building of its type in the world and a large part of the project was understanding and defining the brief to allow the building to function within the requirements under Kew’s DEFRA license, as well a commercial venture for use by external clients, and as a key operations building.  

The brief was to provide a sustainable containment building that met Kew’s requirements under ISO 14001. The building is effectively a hermetically sealed air conditioned glass box, since reducing energy consumption was a primary factor in the design. The building incorporates a heat recover chiller coupled to a heat and coolth tank. Other features include rainwater recycling and heat recovery ventilation. The project is linked to the Lower Nursery CHP system, also designed by Skelly & Couch.