Company Details
Company NameHuthinson and Partners
Address3.14 The Record Hall
16-16A Baldwin’s Gardens
London
United Kingdom
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NameJames Bazeley
Job TitleDirector
EmailEmail hidden; Javascript is required.
Phone020 3176 8196
Role of this organisation in the project being enteredArchitect
Category
  • Commercial Building - Buildings that are used for commercial purposes, and include retail, hospitality, workplaces, factories and warehouses and buildings where commercial services are provided. At least 50 percent of the buildings’ floor space will be used for commercial activities. 
Project Name (written how it should appear)LABS at Victoria House
Project AddressVictoria House
Bloomsbury Square
London
United Kingdom
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Client NameLABS Group
Designer/Architect NameHutchinson & Partners
Contractor NameTSK Group
Project Description

Victoria House is an imposing 1920’s Neoclassical Grade II Listed office building in the heart of Holborn. Hutchinson & Partners, in collaboration with the LABS Design Team, carried out an extensive and refined refurbishment for the workspace provider LABS.

The building sits on the eastern edge of Bloomsbury Square and was originally designed as the headquarters for the insurance company Liverpool and Victoria Friendly Company by the Architect Charles William Long. The building underwent an extensive refurbishment in the early 2000s by the acclaimed British Architect Will Alsop.

Hutchinson & Partners looked to reimagine the previous interventions into the building’s fabric as a contemporary reinterpretation of the character of the historic spaces, calling upon a complimentary palette of natural hard-wearing materials and evoking the elegant proportions of the original building, but detailed in a modern and minimal fashion. The aim was to align the sense of old and new, whilst retaining a strict sense of historical narrative that easily allows the viewer to delineate between the past and the present, whilst also allowing them to experience the building as a unified whole. This emergent language has been used as a basis on which the evolving phased refurbishment of the wider building has been carried out.

The grand historic spaces have been sensitively restored, repaired and rejuvenated. The building has been reoriented, bringing the reception down to the street level, and reinstating the entrance from Bloomsbury Square as the principal point of arrival. A new travertine floor, encased in a monolithic terrazzo enclosure, was introduced into the Central Hall, providing level access through the space, whilst a contemporary selection of furniture and fabrics were introduced allowing the visitor a place to linger and absorb the unique majesty of the space.

To the north and south the lift lobbies have been stripped back and relined with a language of cast fluted panels, recalling the detail of the historic marble columns. The datums of the adjacent doorways have been continued into the space, to form a skirting and extended vertical openings that accentuate the generous proportions of the space.

At the upper levels, the office floorplates have now been transformed into a series of elegant contemporary workspaces. Each level has a timber lined axis at its heart that contains the communal accommodation that serves each level, these include a series of lounges, kitchens, libraries, meeting rooms, phonebooths and informal workspaces, with marble, terrazzo, patinated brass, oak and leather detailing, recalling the richness of the palette of the historic spaces. A language of clean lines and datums frame the articulated plasterwork and house the bespoke joinery panelling and sculpted marble portals, lending the space a boutique, intimate feel. An elemental approach to the organisation and composition of these spaces transforms the floors, whilst the office space has been transformed using a simple monochromatic colour scheme punctuated by Chantilly oak flooring and bespoke patinated brass light fittings, that unify the generous volumes of the space and enhance the natural light flooding through the tall windows.

Materials Used

The drab corporate offices, a relic of the previous refurbishment, have now been transformed into a series of elegant contemporary workspaces. Each level has a timber lined axis at its heart that contains the communal accommodation that serves each level, these include a series of lounges, kitchens, libraries, meeting rooms, phonebooths and informal workspaces, with marble, terrazzo, patinated brass, oak and leather detailing, recalling the richness of the palette of the historic spaces. A language of clean lines and datums frame the articulated plasterwork and house the bespoke joinery panelling and sculpted marble portals, lending the space a boutique, intimate feel.

An elemental approach to the organisation and composition of the spaces transforms the floors, whilst the office space has been transformed by the use of a simple monochromatic colour scheme punctuated by Chantilly oak flooring and bespoke patinated brass light fittings, that unify the generous volumes of the space and enhance the natural light flooding through the tall windows. Set within these spaces, the secondary cores of the building contain a proliferation of ancillary functions and sit, wrapped in oak panelling, punctuated by the marble and brass of the kitchen worktops. In the centre of the building the large windows open into the towering atrium, bringing light pouring into the heart of the space.

Sustainability

An operational energy calculation was not undertaken as part of the works. However, there have been several significant improvements that were made to the building, the key items are given below:

- New air handling plant was introduced with heat recovery for the refurbished floors, and for the upcoming phases a strategy has been put in place to ensure that this will be upgraded in due course under life cycle replacement
- Occupancy has been increased by up to 100%
- Building provided with latest generation fan coil units
- Water heating has been converted from gas to electrical on current phases
- Provided with upgraded building management system offering more granular levels of control
- Provided with LED lighting
- Provided with comprehensive local and centralised lighting controls
- Provided with comprehensive centralised electrical metering system
- Existing main heating and chilled water distribution has been changed from constant volume to variable volume offering improvements in efficiency and recommissioned to suit revised duty and operation.

The key aspect of the project was to breathe a new lease of life into a 100 year old building, bringing it into the modern times with the high level of digital capacity and support that is expected and required for businesses today. The existing large open spans of the steel framed building, high floor to floor levels and the rational facade meant that it naturally adapted to change, and so the introduction of new services and digital infrastructure were accommodated with relative ease. Where possible existing elements of the building were retained; Naturally this included the protected heritage elements, of the structure, facades and vertical circulation, but also stretched to the significant repurposing of elements such as the raised floor systems which were able to be incorporated into the design strategy.

The refurbishment needed to provide flexible spaces to offer tenants a greater range of options of configuration, growth, and contraction. The office levels were provided with a highly granular, flexible lighting, ventilation and heating strategy that could adapt to different configurations. A unified internal partition system was installed that is designed to allow its elements to be reused as required across the levels. This adaptable system led to a reduction in the partitions required of approximately 25% of what was initially deemed necessary. To support adaption and change in the future, the Design Team worked closely with the London Borough of Camden to move forward with the principle of a series of flexible layouts that could be implemented as required as part of the Listed Building Consent, as opposed the traditional approach of obtaining Listed Building Consent for a single fixed layout.

The building has lasted for 100 years so far, and we would suggest that there is still a lot of life left in the old dog yet. The design of the refurbishment has a notional design life of 20 years, but the materials used should be able to extend beyond this period with the appropriate maintenance regime, as these were typically specified to be robust, hard wearing natural materials.

The scheme introduced a mineral paint product to many of the painted areas. Airlite has one of the lowest environmental impacts of any paint product, and aside from being anti-bacterial, it purifies the air through the generation of negative ions. The use of this paint sits alongside LABS’ tendency towards biophilic design, and so was introduced in combination with the introduction of a comprehensive internal planting scheme, significant enhancement of the ventilation systems, and the aim to try and enhance the natural lighting within the space so far as was possible.

Lastly, in terms of embracing the wider community, the central historic spaces will be open to the general public, and will contain a coffee bar within the Central Hall. This allows those who would previously have not been able to access the building to enjoy this important historic space.

Issues Faced

The use of natural, traditional materials was key to ensuring that the palette of the newly introduced elements of the design was sympathetic to the character of the existing building. We specified a selection of materials that included marble, travertine, terrazzo, cast stone, dolomite plaster, bronze, antique brass, timber, leather and a selection of fabrics. The natural variation and colour differentiation inherent within these materials required careful consideration, an extensive use of sampling, testing and selection to ensure that they both complimented both each other and wide array of materials that were already present in the historic areas of the building.

For example, the team inspected and approved each individual marble slab to ensure that the tone, veining and colouration were all appropriate. However, whilst this level of care is in itself not unusual, the project started on site in February 2020, and so the COVID pandemic meant that the ability to visit quarries, received international shipments of material at the scale required and other concerns was significantly more challenging. The above example of the use of marble was repeated for almost every material type, placing a significant pressure on the designers, contractors, and suppliers respond to the ever-changing local conditions and to rally together to ensure the quality of the final product. However, the diligence of the whole team paid off, and the obsessive sampling and testing has allowed for a palette of new materials that both complement and enhance that of the historic elements of the building.

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