20 Air Street
The project also involved the refurbishment of the reception space and improvement of the cycle store entrance and wayfinding at basement level.
With an iconic red brick structure Union House located in Southwark at the intersection of Great Suffolk Street and Union Street, has recently undergone significant renovations. Formerly a warehouse the building has been converted into offices, with its upper two levels demolished and replaced with new fourth, fifth and mezzanine floors. These new levels feature a fully glazed south-facing cranked façade, which provides stunning views to those on the upper floors. The reception, lower ground floor and third floor offices have also been refurbished to maintain a cohesive and modern look.
Due to the significant increase in floor space from these renovations, some challenges had to be overcome such as the building’s single lift and limited electrical supply. To ensure that occupants could reach the upper floors an additional lift was installed. For comfort cooling and space heating a VRF heat pump system was introduced.
Despite the challenges of the renovation, Union House now offers over 28,000ft² of multi-tenanted office space, complete with polished concrete or timber flooring. These upgrades provide the opportunity for quirky and unique office tenancies in the chic South Bank district of London.
The project also involved the refurbishment of the reception space and improvement of the cycle store entrance and wayfinding at basement level.
We are looking forward to our continued involvement in the project, pending positive planning feedback.
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.
The building services use a 4-pipe fan coil unit arrangement with various ventilation systems to suit the different use areas. Full building power back-up standby generation, UPS, security and access control and automatic blinds all formed part of the fit-out.
The building at 1 New Burlington Place has been redeveloped to offer 183,000ft² of high quality office and retail accommodation, for which Watkins Payne supplied building services engineering, vertical transportation engineering and energy consultancy to achieve an EPC A rating. We also supplied BREEAM services and achieved a BREEAM Excellent rating for the development.
St James’s Market Phase 2 is the “pioneer” related to the Design for Performance initiative and NABERS UK rating.