OR Consulting acted as Environmental and Acoustic Engineers for the redevelopment of the Grade II listed St Peter’s in the Forest Church, situated on the northern edge of Epping Forest and currently on the “Historic at Risk” register.

To conserve the historic fabric of the building, a free-standing structure was created within the volume of the church to house new community, performance, meeting, commercial kitchen and spiritual spaces.

Our design responded to the client’s architectural, environmental and conservation goals by:

• Sensitively improving the passive thermal performance of the existing building fabric.
• Exploiting the existing thermal mass of the building to free cool the church in summer.
• Employing de-stratification ventilation techniques to reduce heating loads.
• Providing new low carbon heating and hot water plant.
• Integrating the lift design within the new structure.
• Installing low energy light fittings and lighting controls throughout the church.
• Installing energy sub-metering.