Our retrofit discussion forum in the City of London this November

Above: the Clarendon Centre's Queen Street entrance in Oxford. The former retail development is being re-purposed for life sciences and commercial offices

Future Cities Forum will be holding a new series of discussions around retrofit and renewal starting this November in the City of London.

The UK government has announced a home upgrade revolution as it confirmed last month that there will be a boost to minimum energy efficiency standards for rental properties, bringing all homes up to a particular standard by 2030. How home owners retrofit their properties to comply has yet to be detailed.

NatWest and British Gas are reported to be joining together to attempt the decarbonising of up to 1,000 social homes. Places for People is also involved in a trial introducing green retrofit measures.

Meanwhile Grosvenor UK claims it has achieved more than one million square feet of retrofit across its London property portfolio and has ambitions to do more this year. It talks of investing around £90 million towards building green credentials in its buildings.

Back in the summer, energy firm Octopus with housebuilder Verto claimed to marching towards creating homes without energy bills for the first five years. The companies suggest it is a world first in rolling out solar, battery and heat pump arrangements for 'Zero Bills Homes'

The forum will discuss the current housing crisis and what the UK government intends to do to build more homes across the country but move towards sustainable green and affordable places to live. It will also highlight where energy retrofit has created sustainability excellence for public buildings and how retrofit is actively helping to restore uses for buildings into new ventures, such as retail into life sciences development.

See below three examples of the categories that will be discussed at the forum:

Above: Cornmarket Oxford in 2024 with Clarendon Centre on right and Jesus College's new Cheng Yu Tung Building on right designed by MICA Architects. This comprises student facilities on upper floors and leisure and healthcare on ground and basement.

From retail to science and healthcare

Oxford Science Enterprises ('OSE'), the Science Business Builder and preferred investment partner of the University of Oxford, announced in 2022 that it had entered into a joint venture with the Lothbury Property Trust ("Lothbury") to develop high-specification laboratory and office space, for early-stage life science businesses, in the heart of Oxford city centre.

The 30,000 sq ft R&D space is part of a comprehensive £200 million redevelopment of the Clarendon Centre, currently progressing and approved by Oxford City Council. Led by Lothbury. On completion, the R&D space will provide an ideal environment for fast-growing life science companies, including those founded by Oxford Science Enterprises. In addition to R&D facilities, plans for the overall 250,000 sq ft site include creating space for student accommodation, offices, retail outlets and restaurants.

OSE reported:

'In Oxford, demand for laboratory space is approximately ten times greater than existing supply. With more than 100 companies in its portfolio, Oxford Science Enterprises has an ever-increasing requirement for specialist laboratory and office space. The redevelopment of the Clarendon Centre will significantly increase Oxford Science Enterprises' existing 55,000 sq ft footprint in and around Oxford and enhance its ability to provide its companies with the essential facilities needed to grow and thrive.'  

Above: Bath Abbey - image courtesy of Buro Happold

Energy retrofit of heritage buildings

As one of the most visited places in the South West of England, Bath Abbey welcomes over 420,000 visitors annually and has a regular congregation of 600 people. With parts of the Abbey dating back to the 16th Century, significant renovation projects have been undertaken in recent years in an effort to secure the future of this historic building.

Buro Happold worked with the Abbey on their Heritage Lottery Funded Footprint Project to replace the floor, upgrade the heating system and refurbish the vaults to create new spaces.

The 16th century Abbey’s floor has over 8,500 burials beneath it, many of which have started to collapse, making the floor structurally unstable. The building’s 100-year-old heating system was also starting to fail. Buro Happold's engineers needed to stabilise the floor, install new heating and refurbish the vaults below ground floor level to expand the Abbey’s facilities.

The Abbey had the unique opportunity to make use of the Bath hot spring water, which rises naturally to a number of sprints and boreholes in the centre of the city. The Roman Great Drain carries nearly 1,000,000 litres of natural hot water from the Roman Baths, which is located adjacent to the Abbey, to the River Avon every day. While this presented an ideal opportunity to provide the Abbey with a sustainable heating system, the water is technically difficult to use in practice due to high mineral and silt content, dissolved oxygen and risk of corrosion, and health risks from pathogenic amoeba. The Buro Happold team needed to propose solutions that would allow the water to be safe and usable.

Andrew Wylie, Partner at Buro Happold, commented at Future Cities Forum's 'Cultural Cities' discussion at the BFI:

'There have been many concerns about the cost of operating heritage assets and the shock of energy prices hasn't helped. Bath Abbey through the visitor experience has become more than just a place of worship and questions about how it is heated year round have been asked.

'The solution lay in the great drain from the Roman Baths which flows out into the river at 25 degrees centigrade. We wanted to use it to heat the abbey so used a heat pump to raise the temperature to 50 degrees and dug low level trenches to give a background warmth and prevent damp. The challenge was not to subject people to bugs in the water and also stop the systems from calcifying. The Heritage Lottery Fund supported the project but it was the public engagement to sell the benefits that helped with the fundraising.'

Above: the Kensington Building, viewed from the north side of Kensington High Street (courtesy Pilbrow & Partners)

Upgrading and remodelling a former department store site: the Kensington Building, London W8

Pilbrow and Partners' recently completed project for Ashby Capital remodelled the bleak 1970s building on the corner of Wrights Lane and Kensington High Street in order to transform the quality of its architecture, public realm and internal working environment. The re-modelling was carried out while the Boots store at street level continued to trade.

The practice described the challenge:

'The project improved connectivity to Kensington High Street Underground station through the creation of a new retail arcade, linking to Wrights Lane.

'The existing building was a purpose-built department store built in the 1970s but occupied principally with offices. The retail was poorly configured and routes to the adjacent Kensington High Street Underground Station are informal through the ground floor Boots unit.

'It was recognised as being of low architectural quality and its large, blank ground floor frontages detracting from the public realm along Wrights Lane. The orthogonal planning of the existing building broke the alignment of the historic street wall, leaving awkward residual spaces on this frontage.

'The proposals restored the definition of the urban block with new facades of Roman brick and Portland Stone. The building scale along this frontage is now modulated as a series of bays – a remediation of the relentless mass of the existing building and a restoration of its civic nature.'