The Robert Gordon University(RGU) is the first institution in Scotland to adopt an environmentally -friendly construction technique in one of its new builds at its Garthdee campus in Aberdeen.
The building, which is the first phase of the university’s £140m estates masterplan, uses a system called Cobiax, which employs recycled material in prefabricated concrete slabs.
The Cobiax system in RGU’s new Corporate Services Building incorporates 30,000 air-filled plastic balls, many of which are produced from recycled plastic. This forms the structural heart of the 2000m2 three-storey building. Set into prefabricated concrete slabs and covered in situ with a concrete topping, the balls form the hollow centre of a floor system reducing the amount of concrete used by 35% and the foundation load by 20%.
Create Engineeringintroduced the flat slab Cobiax system to provide the necessary high quality concrete finish whilst maximising the floor to ceiling heights in open plan buildings. They were one of the first consultants to work with Cobiax within the UK, working closely with suppliers and contractors to customise this innovative method, which has already been used in Germany, Holland and Belgium.
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