Surface Design Awards – Complete

• COMMERCIAL BUILDING - INTERIOR
  Commercial Buildings that are used for commercial purposes, and include retail, hospitality, workplaces, factories and warehouses and buildings where commercial services are provided. At least 50 percent of the buildings’ floor space will be used for commercial activities.

Sustainable Workspaces at County Hall offered a unique opportunity to adapt a landmark historical building into an inspiring new home for a community of emerging climate tech businesses. Adopting a low impact design philosophy focused on minimising embodied carbon, the design is a testing ground for innovative materials and techniques that show an alternative path for workspace retrofit.

Sustainable Workspaces is a branch of Sustainable Ventures - a full service ecosystem for sustainable start-ups that provides investment, community, innovation and workspace. Having out-grown their previous location, Sustainable Ventures acquired 3,600 sqm within part of the 5th floor of County Hall - a Grade II* listed building and former home of the Greater London Council. Material Works were commissioned to work up designs that articulated the space through a series of interventions to enable the new use. These included the creation of private offices, event spaces, innovation labs, cafés and break-out areas. The existing space had been untouched since the Greater London Council vacated in the 1980s, providing a unique context of historic finishes as the backdrop for the new works.

Modular Partitions and furniture were produced by U-build as part of a long-term project with Sustainable Workspaces to develop a fully demountable system. The plywood design has minimal mechanical fittings and can easily be reconfigured to different layouts, moved to new locations or completely disassembled into reusable timber. A large portion of the wall modules used at County Hall were successfully de-mounted and moved from Sustainable Workspace’s previous home on a lower floor, with adaptations and reconfigurations ongoing to meet the changing requirements of occupiers.

The project totalled £4.25m and was completed on 2nd June 2023 with Cast Interiors as Main Contractor.

Where new materials were required, they were chosen to avoid the high carbon yields associated with traditional building products. Focus was given to materials that utilise agricultural or industrial by-products, exploit existing waste streams or are derived from carbon sequestering forestry. Examples include joinery finishes created from waste coffee or fruit peel and bio-resin by Biohm, carpentry using composite boards formed from agricultural waste (Ecoboard), cork flooring by Quadrant, mycelium acoustic baffles by Biohm, reclaimed wooden worktops from a school science lab, a countertop formed from reclaimed construction waste by Granby Workshop and recycled textile felt by i-Did. Further focus was given to degradable bonding agents and processes to ensure specified materials were easily recyclable at end of use as well as being free from toxins and VOCs that can cause health issues. The use of natural lime plasters and lime based paints improves air quality as well as significantly reducing the project’s carbon footprint due to their low energy production methods.

Throughout the space, reclaimed fittings and furniture were sourced either from site demolition or external reclamation yards. These included reclaimed WCs and cisterns, light fittings, doors and furniture.

The project should be considered for a Surface Design Award for its focus on minimising wasted resource, a common issue in commercial interior fit-outs. The project considers materials that are already there as part of the finished product, with less focus on new materials which create a more 'pristine' look and more on what is necessary.

Existing fabric and fittings that could be re-used were identified at the beginning of the design process, and plans then developed around retaining as much of these as possible. Repairs were limited to defective areas only, with the final finish a celebration of the ‘as found’ character rather than seeking uniform appearance. Questioning the expectations of what constitutes a finished surface allowed for a large reduction in the materials required and consequent embodied energy. Existing doors, windows, flooring and plaster were also retained and new decoration limited to areas of high footfall and expected wear.

New structures and interventions within the space are limited to those essential to the proposed use and comfort of occupiers. To increase longevity and reduce end of use waste, partition walls and joinery were designed from robust materials and configured into modular, demountable systems. This allows for elements to be easily adapted, re-located, or for components to be fully disassembled into re-useable base materials.

The design was developed alongside five guiding principles:
- Light touch retrofit
- Adaptable/reusable interventions
- Reclaimed furniture and fittings
- Low carbon materials
- Natural materials and processes

The design decisions realised a dramatic reduction in embodied carbon when compared with a typical office fit-out. Material Works have undertaken a carbon calculation for the works which show a total saving of 1,200 tonnes of Carbon in comparison to a typical office fit-out using raised access floors, suspended ceilings, commercial partitioning and standard commercial finishes throughout. A full life cycle assessment was conducted and as a result of the aforementioned design choices, the project's environmental impact totals 30kg CO^2e/ m2, or EPC rating A.

HERITAGE
Being situated in a Grade II* Listed Building meant that proposals would need to be sensitive to the existing condition. This leant towards our design approach - utilising as much of the existing as possible, minimising demolition and the use of new resources, for example using lime plaster to infill damaged areas only. The extent and resulting cost of works to the existing plaster was difficult to establish early on in the project and required further investigation on site to confirm how much plaster would need to be used.

BUDGET
The project had high sustainability aspirations whilst also working towards a tighter budget than other commercial projects of this size and complexity. Throughout the project we needed to balance financial and environmental cost to maintain design intent and cost certainty. This was achieved by selecting key areas to prioritise costs against design impact and including materials with sustainability credentials as well as being fit for commercial use.

MATERIALS IN A COMMERCIAL SETTING
Applying new organic materials to a commercial interior presented some issues in regards to test certification - many suppliers were in the process of acquiring the necessary certification and this presented a high level of risk. Part of the design process was selecting the materials and working through with the suppliers to consider likelihood and applicability to the required use. Some products were ruled out as a result of longer lead times or lack of appropriate test certification eg. surface treatment or fire resistance.

Video shot by Jim Stephenson, Nyima Murry and Edward Bishop. Photos taken by Jim Stephenson and Fred Howarth - refer to initial at beginning of file name for credit.

Architect overseeing this project within the practice was Dickon Hayward ARB RIBA.

Please contact georgie@material-works.com for any further images of the project or of the existing condition.