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 7,600ft² area of 7 Bermondsey Street near London Bridge Station was refurbished to high quality office accommodation, for which Watkins Payne supplied building services engineering and vertical transportation engineering. The refurbished area is spread across basement and ground floor.
New build mixed-use development comprising a commercial building housing both office and retail accommodation along with a row of 7 four level mews houses.
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 property situated on the A23 near Brighton was granted permission by the council under permitted development rights to change to a residential site from office development to provide 63 apartments. The apartments are separate over seven stories consisting of one, two and three bed apartments. The redeveloped to offer 59,000ft² of high quality residential accommodation, for which Watkins Payne supplied building services engineering and energy consultancy to achieve an EPCs between B – C rating.
234 Bath Road development located in Slough is arranged over ground, first and second floors, with a basement level car park and podium level car park to the rear. The development constructed in 2016 stand at 68,000 ft2 of office accommodation. Part of the ground office floor area was utilised to provide a café to enhance the amenities within the development.
Watkins Payne carried out the Independent Design Review role for Seal House, a commercial office development, located in central London.