By 2013 Farsons had installed a new state‐of‐the‐art brewery and built new offices, and the Old Brewhouse and the iconic Farsons Brewery building were rendered practically redundant. Simonds Farsons Cisk plc decided to hold a limited international competition by invitation to redevelop the industrial buildings and find new uses for these assets. The competition was won by Ritchie Studios (at the time Ian Ritchie Architects Ltd) with a proposal to transform the brewery buildings into an office campus, and the old brew‐house into places for start‐up offices and heritage spaces. The Art Deco façade/arcade of the old offices, warehouses, and personnel residences is a visually prominent feature; it is listed Grade II. The buildings behind are replaced by five low‐rise office blocks seamlessly integrating the restored and rehabilitated arcade as a link to the history of the company and site.
The lead architect was Ian Ritchie, based in London who designed the buildings up to design development stage. Our office was responsible for the structural and architectural detailing of the project for construction, and acted as the resident engineers and restoration architects for the duration. The new office blocks behind the retained façade are separated by landscaped gardens, some 16 metres wide, providing ample natural light to the offices (which enjoy side outlooks), as well as serving as break‐out spaces. Colours are used to give the gardens and the offices individual identities.
Behind the office blocks with a frontage on an internal street of the complex there is a seven‐level (above ground) car park with some 700 slots. The car park is topped by another storey of offices. Each floor plate of the typical office has a row of central concrete columns supporting flat slabs. Concrete columns and flat slabs were also used in the car park, which is naturally ventilated through concrete lattice block facades on three sides. The structural system adopted followed a series of studies and analysis to ensure the most efficient structural solution, which respect the design intent.
Since the brief called for state‐of‐the‐art environmental technologies for the heating and cooling of the buildings, embedded in the office slabs is a network of chilled water pipes forming the Thermally‐Activated Building System (TABS). This must be a first for a local building and the pipework is linked to the equipment in the basement plant room. The windows are shaded by precast concrete fins fixed to the precast concrete wall panels. The heaviest of these wall panels weighs some 7 tonnes; they are attached to the flat slabs with proprietary stainless steel connections, which allow the required degrees of freedom during installation.
The centrally located block houses the old board room at first floor, the entrance hall and stairs rising to first floor. Part of this block was re-design to incorporate a new double‐height conference hall accessible from the main entrance, and four overlying levels of offices. There are no columns in the conference room, instead a concrete Vierendeel girder was used to link the conference slab with the roof level and suspend the intermediate floors from the same girder. This allows the building to work as a complete structural element and avoids any columns in the conference room.
Photo Credits: TBA Periti and Joe Smith
