In the heart of the Birmingham city centre overlooking the cathedral this 65,000ft² refurbished office space is positioned in a prominent location. The development includes a basement, lower ground, upper ground, 1st floor to 9th floor with a combination of retail, amenity and office Cat A and Cat B offerings.
The entrance to the building is off Temple Row into a double height reception which is luminated with the use of curve lighting wrapping around the columns highlighting the rich colour palate of textures on the finishes and furnishing.
Exposed services has been adopted for the office floor provided with new LED linear lighting, ducted fan coil units and power distributed within the office floor void. Air source heat pump (ASHP) provide the heating and cooling to the space utilizing low carbon technology. Upper floors (3rd to 8th floor) are served from a central air handling unit (AHU) with heat recovery. The AHU provide demand ventilation with the use of the on-floor CO2 sensors controlled via the building management system.
The basement level provides end of trip facilities with male and female showers and changing facilities, along with secure cycle storage.
The refurbishment work is targeting BREEAM “Excellent” certification, and the office floors has achieved an “A” rated Energy Performance Certificate (EPC).
Sustainability initiatives include LED lighting with occupancy detection and daylight dimming controls, solar thermal hot water heating, air source heat pumps and photovoltaic panels, resulting in an EPC rating of A and a Very Good rating under BREEAM New Construction (Industrial) 2014.
Watkins Payne carried out the Independent Design Review role for 2 Aldermanbury Square, a redevelopment of the existing City Place House located at 55 Basinghall Street.
The building at 55 Colmore Row has been refurbished to offer 150,000ft² of high quality office accommodation, for which Watkins Payne supplied building services engineering, vertical transportation engineering, BREEAM duties and energy consultancy to achieve an BREEAM ‘Excellent’ and EPC B rating.
The project also involved the refurbishment of the reception space and improvement of the cycle store entrance and wayfinding at basement level.
Sustainability is incredibly important for the Client and as such the building is BREEAM ‘Outstanding’, WELL ‘enabled’ Gold, alongside WiredScore Platinum. In addition, the Design for Performance approach is been adopted in order to minimise operational energy and hence carbon emissions.
Watkins Payne was commissioned to design a Cat A fit-out refurbishment across the existing 11,800sq.ft building. The ground floor was completely redeveloped with a new office entrance lobby and 1,300sq.ft new retail space.