Cambridge House

Structural Designer

Webb Yates Engineers

Client Name

Birkbeck College, University of London

Location

London, UK

ARCHITECT
Penoyre & Prasad LLP

主要承包商
ARJ Construction Ltd

M&E AND SUSTAINABILITY
史盖&沙发

COST CONSULTANT
Artelia

ACOUSTICS DESIGN
Acoustics Central

PROJECT MANAGER
Mace

PLANNING CONSULTANT
Turley

FIRE STRATEGY
MLM

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

A bold new 1,807m2 teaching and learning space for the University of London’s Birkbeck College. The major refurbishment and extension accommodates a café and learning hub for students on the ground floor and basement. Teaching and learning spaces occupy the upper floors, with a large modern lecture theatre now in the new rooftop extension.

Submitted in 2021

法官's comment:
The major roof top extension of a striking 100-year-old building into a new teaching and learning space. Enabled through skilful structural engineering in a challenging central London location.

The option to extend the building, rather than rebuild, carefully balanced the client’s ambitions to minimise capital expenditure and development risk and increase the building’s floor area with significantly reduced environmental impact.
Adding two new storeys to the project changed its building class and this was successfully dealt with. Effective horizontal tying was implemented in the design of the extension. Vertical tying was implemented within the columns and structural walls of the extension and new structural cores in the full height of the building.

Due to its location, access to the site was difficult and construction was carefully planned to allow for this. Prefabricated elements were proposed wherever possible, including the CLT and steel items for the extension which could be unloaded quickly and minimised the manual work at height limiting road closures.

An impressive transformation project, breathing new value and purpose into an existing structure.