Model highlighting the
new (blue) steelwork
additions
FACT FILE
Shepherdess Walk, London
Main Client: Schroder UK Property Fund
Architect: Buckley Gray Yeoman Architecture
Main contractor: Sir Robert McAlpine
Structural engineer: Heyne Tillett Steel
Steelwork contractor: Billington Structures
Steel tonnage: 850t
A 1980s multi-use structure is being refurbished and enlarged
into a modern commercial development with the aid of new
steelwork elements. Martin Cooper reports.
Straddling the northern boundary of
the City of London, the previously
working class district of Hoxton
has undergone a radical makeover
in recent times.
During the 1990s, its proximity to the
centre of London and a plentiful array
of former industrial warehouses drew
artists, creative industries as well as small
dot-com companies to the area, changing
the landscape into a trendy and vibrant
community.
An example of this changing
environment is located on Shepherdess
Walk, a thoroughfare previously noteworthy
for the Eagle public house, made famous for
being name-checked in the ‘pop goes the
weasel’ nursery rhyme.
A former 1980s building that was once
divided into two parts to accommodate
offices and a printing press is being
refurbished along with the addition of
new steel-framed upper storeys to create
approximately 14,000m2 of high quality
commercial space.
The original six-storey building, was
constructed with a concrete frame, and also
includes an attached three-storey annex
along Micawber Street, that together form
an overall L-shape on plan.
“In short, we’ve got rid of a dividing wall
to create one large building, rationalised the
existing cores to suit the new layout, added
two new floors and constructed a brandnew
rear façade that extends all of the
floorplates,” explains Sir Robert McAlpine
Project Engineer Andrew Timbers.
The refurbishment has made use of
steel construction to form the new floors,
façade and new cores, as this framing
solution provided a quicker construction
programme and meant minimal new
foundations were required.
“Steelwork offered a lighiweight solution
that needed less strengthening works to the
original structure, and we justified 93% of
the existing foundations to carry the loads
from the additional storeys.” explains Heyne
Tillett Steel Associate James Mumford.
Based around the existing 7.2m × 7.2m
column grid pattern, the new steel-framed
floors continue the same pattern to form
a seventh and eighth storey to the main
Shepherdess Walk part of the scheme and
a new fourth and fifth storey to the lower
annex.
The only exceptions to the regular
column pattern are a couple of terraces
formed in the new upper floors, one of
which was required as a rights-to-light
planning issue.
In these areas, carbon-fibre
strengthening has been added to the
underside of the offset columns and the
adjacent members.
Interestingly, the new rear façade, that
adds an extra bay to the existing main block
and then ties into the new upper floors, was
initially going to be built with reinforced
concrete, but after a value engineering
exercise the design team changed it to a
steel frame.
As well as adding new elements, plenty
of work has been undertaken to reconfigure
the existing building into a modern office
block. This has included infilling and
moving the four cores that previously
served the building’s two distinct parts.
Commercial
Steel additions
16 NSC
May 19
The new steel-braced
cores have been moved
to the rear façade
/Braced_frames
/Multi-storey_office_buildings#Speed_of_construction
/The_case_for_steel#Take_a_load_off_your_foundations
/Concept_design#Floor_grids
/Facades_and_interfaces
/Multi-storey_office_buildings