We’re refurbishing a prominent block in London’s Chiswell Street Conservation Area to provide modern, flexible office accommodation in a building that, without major intervention, would be rendered obsolete. Designed to minimise embodied and whole-life carbon, our scheme reimagines the 1980s building as a 21st-century workplace with top-quality amenities and affordable space for small businesses.
Our design prioritises high levels of re-use, saving 70% of the existing building’s structural steel and 75% of its slabs, all while presenting new high-quality facades and services. A 2-storey roof extension repurposes existing steelwork and utilises low-carbon cross-laminated timber floor slabs to deliver additional floorspace, while external landscaped terraces will increase biodiversity and target a high urban greening factor.
We’re recladding the building in a new brick facade that draws upon the unique material and tonal palette of neighbouring listed buildings, enhancing its contribution to the streetscape. The new cladding – made from a high percentage of waste content – will also improve the building’s thermal performance, unify its massing, and open up much of the ground floor elevation to increase street activation.
With its fine-grain, human-scale treatment, our scheme will breathe new life into this building as well as its surrounding townscape.
Reimagining a 1980s office block as a 21st-century workplace
