A step up in student accommodation

CMS Window Systems have played a key role in helping Church Lukas architects and main contractor Graham Construction to deliver an new 330-unit student accommodation building in the heart of Glasgow.

The £20 million Elgin Place development at 240 Bath Street for iQ Student Accommodation takes its name from the former Elgin Place Congregational Church which previously occupied the site before it fell into disrepair and could not be saved.

The new 14 storey building that replaces the once iconic church features a ‘glass box’ structure for the upper floors to provide a contemporary new addition to Glasgow’s skyline.

The 25-week, £1.4 million fenestration programme saw CMS fabricate and install a combination of aluminium curtain walling screens, doors, a rooflight, and 160 windows.

Elgin Place provides 330 rooms in a variety of configurations over 14 floors with a large ground floor retail space. The single-occupancy studio rooms and cluster flats of four to eight bedrooms range from 14m2-18m2 in size, with 5% of the overall accommodation capacity specially designed to cater for students who are physically impaired. All standard rooms feature facilities for those with either hearing or visual impairments too.

CMS applied Metal Technology systems throughout the project. This included Metal Technology System 17 for the eight curtain walling screens and rooflight, with all the windows using Metal Technology 4-35 or 5-35 Hi+ Systems to provide reliable structural integrity, weather performance, thermal enhancement and security.

A number of doors were also incorporated into the curtain walling screens, manufactured using the Metal Technology System 7-20 5-20D System. A more bespoke solution was developed by CMS and Metal Technology for the glass box curtain walling at levels 7-13 in line with the architect’s vision, which included custom designed mullion caps.