Development director at General Projects, Ben Cross talks to AT about retrofitting two major buildings in London and what the market for retrofit is like at the moment and moving forward.
Ben Cross (Credit: With Love Studio)
What’s going on at the Heal’s Building (currently being retrofitted by Buckley Gray Yeoman)?
Our workplace-led re-imagination of the Heal’s Building on Tottenham Court Road is a fusion of modern technologies and industrial heritage. It’s actually a former factory complex in which Heal & Son designed, manufactured, sold and dispatched its furniture to the world. Whilst most people would think of this as a single building it is a campus of eight or nine buildings built over two centuries and, of course, still home to Heal’s alongside a rich tapestry of creative, financial, technology and real estate sectors.
Right now, we’re putting the finishing touches to our most significant phase of works, where we have refurbished parts of the old department store, mattress factory and dispatch works to create an inspiring collection of heritage-infused workspaces that also meet the demands of modern occupiers. That has meant investing heavily in performance upgrades whilst being respectful of its Grade II* listed status – a barrier most developers, I expect, would find too challenging. But we’ve embraced it as a means to deliver a product that is both respectful of the past and ready for the future.
Photos of the inside and outside of the revamped Heal’s Building. (Credit: Whitepaper, London Festival of Architecture, DNCO and General Projects).
What’s going on a Metropolis (currently being retrofitted by AHMM)?
Metropolis is retrofit at its most radical. This is a building that, seven years ago, would have been one of the 50,000 that are demolished every year to make way for a shiny new build – out with the old, in with the new. So the brief was simple. Reset the standard for what a refurbishment can achieve and deliver. Fast-forward over half a decade and we are only six months away from completion of one of the highest performing, amenity-rich and most sustainable developments in London. All rekindled from a Richard Seifert mid-century classic that was commissioned originally for Woolworths as their UK headquarters.
It’s difficult to distil what is truly special about this building. We’ve created market-leading amenity throughout the whole building, given every floor a private garden, extended the building by 50 per cent using mass timber, planted over 4,000 trees, saved 4,240 tonnes of carbon through building re-use, achieved BREEAM Outstanding, removed all fossil fuels from our energy supply and we were the first building in London to achieve AirRated Platinum. It really is a building of superlatives. But if you were to say one thing about it, I would hope it is proof that radically reinventing an existing building is not only better for the planet, but delivers better product too.
Renders and construction photos of Metropolis. (Credit: SecciSmith and ISG)
I note you’ve gone with two different architects here. How do you choose who to work with?
Selecting an architect to work with is one of the toughest aspects of the job as we are blessed with incredible architectural talent in this country. So selecting a creative partner comes down to experience, enterprise and timing – to work with us, you just have to be persistent and a pleasure to work with… and I recognised I’ve been fortunate to work with some of the best.
However, working with existing buildings takes a great deal of skill and an acceptance that what we create must balance against the old. It’s not a place for ego or singular ideas. We’re adding to the history of a building or place – not starting again – and we need to be respectful of the user, society and future generations that are impacted by our work.
What is the market like for repurposing these old department stores in this way?
The market conditions are tough – there’s no escaping reality. Customers have choice and are far more sophisticated and demanding than they have ever been before. And rightly so because for far too long, the built environment has never needed innovate. Build it and they will come.
But now we have a critical agenda to deliver high-performance buildings that delivering material, meaningful and measurable results. They need to be rigorously efficient, exceptionally intelligent, superbly sustainable and prioritise the most important driver of any market-leading product. For the customer, whether it’s a refurbishment or a new build, the goal is the same. However, the benefit of existing buildings is that they are, in the most part, centrally located, well-connected, surrounded by social amenities and are often prestigious buildings that have already stood the test of time.
Source: Architecture Today
