Two Tabernacle Street
This distinctive workspace scheme focuses on providing high quality, contemporary office space, while maximising lettable floor area and floor to ceiling heights within the constraints of a tight urban site. A list of planning constraints, including the conservation area context, complex rights to light requirements and limited access to the L-shaped site further defined the framework of the project.
Following a fire in March 2010 the burnt out shell of the original building was all that remained on the site.
Contained on all sides by five neighbouring buildings, with the sole access point on Tabernacle Street, the L-shaped site provided an opportunity to reshape the building volume; maximizing daylight within, while preserving the amenity of surrounding properties.
Following extensive discussions with the planners Piercy & Company attempted to preserve the unusual characterful façade carefully measuring and cataloguing the details of the surviving features of the Victorian façade to Tabernacle Street. This elegant period elevation was then painstakingly reconstructed in keeping with the surrounding Victorian warehouse character, using the highest quality masonry and stone and reusing the original brick where possible.
The resulting architectural form is largely hidden from the street, revealing itself as you travel through the reconstructed Victorian entrance into the contemporary new spaces beyond.
Folded and angled roof planes, the result of the complex rights to light constraints, are clad in Tecu brass; a material evocative of the area’s industrial heritage.
Old and new elements have been contrasted in both the external treatment and the interior spaces.
Victorian details, such as external imperial brickwork and stone cills, cornices and capital combine with the ceiling roses and moulded cornices which feature in the double-height reception.
Beyond this space, the traditional interior gives way to a series of contemporary and flexible workspaces with refined detailing and minimal finishes.
The building culminates in a dramatic top floor office space with a deeply pleated ceiling and a large slot rooflight that floods the interior with daylight.
The office floors are typically serviced via a bulkhead running down the centre of each space. Containing the services in this way creates a generous floor-to-ceiling height either side of over 3m measured from the raised floor to exposed concrete soffit.
