Construction works have started on site at 469 Bethnal Green Road, a former 1970s textile workshop in London’s east end. The existing building is being retained and reimagined to provide a low-energy, materially rich office building.
Occupying a corner plot on Bethnal Green Road, in a rapidly changing area of East London, the existing 1970s textiles workshop is a robust, yet unremarkable three-storey building with inelegant proportions. In response to the client’s brief to provide new creative workspaces, the ambition is to create a high-quality, sustainable building, which stands as an exemplar towards the increasingly vital retrofit agenda by maintaining as much of the existing building, and its embodied carbon, as possible.
The characteristics of the existing warehouse building are not erased, but instead form the basis for the composition of the new lightweight extension, which improves its proportions, setting and overall functionality by doubling its height with a new three-storey, timber-framed structure.
The new façade continues the structural pattern of the existing grey brick base, albeit with a light appearance of hot dipped galvanised steel fins, which allow daylight into the upper floors. The architectural composition of old and new is seen as a cohesive whole, united by a palette of silver-grey materials.
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