Building study: Technique by Buckley Gray Yeoman

Buckley Gray Yeomon的主管Amr Assaad在指导我完成该公司的最新项目时流露出热情。这是对伦敦克勒肯维尔区高斯韦尔路一家杜松子酒酿酒厂的大规模翻新和扩建。

Although the key drivers were fundamentally commercial, BGY has not approached this project as some run-of-the-mill retrofit. Instead, there is a playful mix of revealed history and urban intervention, plus a beautifully understated rooftop timber extension.

One of the options at feasibility stage was a demolition and new-build approach. “But my first impressions on visiting the site were that we had something that was hugely characterful” says Assaad, “and there was beauty in the distinct conditions we found within the varied contexts of the building.”

From a sustainability perspective, BGY also quickly realised that they could save a huge amount of carbon by working with the existing fabric.

客户，General Projects，显然在帮助这个项目超越普通方面发挥了很大的作用。Jacob Loftus的创新开发公司通过挑战现有建筑而出名。

洛夫特斯很高兴地将利润与文化和气候变化的讨论结合起来。He has also been avocal critic在谈到拆除牛津街玛莎百货的计划时，他问道:“在气候紧急情况下，这怎么可能是合理的?”

This is not BGY’s first scheme for General Projects. They have collaborated before on the controversial refurbishment of Stirling’s No 1 Poultry and have teamed up again on the reinvention of the Heals building on Tottenham Court Road. This track record of working together has enabled a partnership that nicely marries commercial imperatives with a strong commitment to design, adaptive re-use and sustainability.

There is a Chippefield-esque quality to this project that belies its humble commercial origins. The complexity of the site and its two very different street elevations have been given a new coherence.

该项目最成功的方面之一是，建筑师赋予了整个场地一种强大的城市存在感，增加了但没有从根本上改变附近的特征。

As an urban composition, the development consists of three main elements – the Goswell Road and Pear Street elevations and a long vacant corner plot, previously occupied by a pub.

A handsome neoclassical facade faces onto Goswell Road and provides a formal presence to the primary street frontage. This was originally the front door to the Tanqueray Gordon site.

Here, an existing second-floor brick attic storey has been removed, but replaced by an almost identical brick treatment, which now extends upwards by one additional floor. It could have looked clumsy and overbearing, but the adherence to an essentially classical ordering of the fenestration and detailing enhances the original understated neo-classical elevation.

The fourth floor is a glazed pavilion but is stepped back from the main elevation and has an appropriately recessive presence when seen from the street.

On the ground level, BGY have lowered the window sills to pavement level. Using stone removed from beneath the original sills, the new granite window returns match exactly the existing stone base. The effect is surprisingly undisruptive to the overall composition and has the functional benefit of allowing daylight into the basement along this elevation.

The changes are substantial but are carried out so deftly and with such empathy for the existing building and streetscape that the whole effect is beneficial rather destructive. It also makes a nice change from so many contemporary additions to older buildings that feel the need to shout loudly about their difference.

Along Pear Tree Street, the 1950s distillery presents itself as a conventional mid-20th-century brick industrial elevation. This was where the project hit multiple planning objections, mainly due to daylight and overlooking concerns raised by the residents of the flats on the opposite side of the road.

Islington council required changes here before granting planning approval, including step backs and automatic blinds on the new upper floors.

At ground level, three existing loading bays have been retained, complete with concertina industrial doors. The loading bay area had been designed so that it could be subdivided into smaller units with high visibility street frontages but has now been let to a single tenant and will remain as a single space.

Tying these two existing elevations together is a new grey brick corner pavilion. The pub that long occupied this site was once owned by Tanqueray Gordon & Co Ltd. The pub appears to have survived the Second World War bombing that destroyed the distillery but was later also demolished. The corner plot was then left empty for many years and used for car parking.

现代主义建筑师传统上并不擅长处理角落，很少允许它们发挥作为路标和入口的潜力。然而，在这里，BGY充分利用了这个机会，将这个地方恢复为整个发展的城市枢纽，重新赋予角落活力，并将两个现有的立面连接成一个连贯的整体。BGY将展馆称为“艺术盒子”，并通过使用对比鲜明的再生灰砖来彰显其突出性。

The Goswell Street elevation of the new corner pavilion is entirely blank, apart from a tall centrally placed door at ground level, identifying this as the new primary entrance for the development. Along Pear Tree Street, three large windows allow pedestrians walking south on Goswell Road a glimpse of the activities taking place within. This new-build element acts an urban fascinator and signals arrival and entry.

The entrance foyer is a collaboration with Formafantasma, an Italian design partnership fronted by Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin. Essentially a permanent recreation of an installation they had previously presented at the Milan furniture fair, it channels 1970s Milanese modernism and the ochre tones of Mount Etna’s volcanic ash into the world of the humble office reception area.

It sounds more exciting than it actually is, but at least avoids the generic feel of so many of these types of spaces. However, with an underwhelming reception desk that disappears into the wall and not much seating, it is not hard to imagine a new tenant wanting to radically reimagine this space before long.

Upstairs within the “art box” a generous double-height room presents opportunities for use as a gallery space or boardroom. Direct access to the ground-floor reception might have helped to give this space a stronger identity within the whole scheme.

在内部，建筑的主体通过回归其核心材料品质而获得了新的生命。在一楼和二楼，BGY做了一项出色的工作，拆除了1980年代末办公室改建的残余部分，露出了现有的混凝土柱、梁和天花板。

It is a tried and tested approach but is dealt with here with a rigorous authenticity. The simple concrete structure is left largely unadulterated by services and clutter.

除了混凝土板下方的一些简单的轨道照明外，建筑的大部分机械和电气设备都隐藏在350毫米高的架空地板下。这包括进气口和出气口，这是使用地板下挡板分离。

北部和南部的大部分高地都有自然采光，开放式办公空间工作得非常好。它不是激进的，但它是一个令人耳目一新的提醒，如何与现有的结构深刻的共鸣，加上精心考虑的简单的设计方法，可以真正帮助重新发现建筑的本质。

正如Assaad告诉我的那样，设计意图是“创造一个平静得多的办公空间，让结构呼吸”。它们的内部有一种惊人的元素性质。去除积体，网格和结构决定了建筑解决方案。

Assaad tells me that he approached this project as an “opportunity to add another layer that unified and simplified the building through a sense of collage.” It is a credit to the project team that they have largely achieved their objective. “We wanted a sense of joy, not a homogenous office space,” says Assaad.

This becomes doubly clear on the new third and fourth floors, where the distillery’s structural grid is picked up again, but this time in cross-laminated timber. The effect is to create a common language across all of the main office floors, but with a nicely handled variation in materials and colour as you rise up through the building.

At basement level BGY has removed the floor slab at the rear of the site to bring in daylight and maximise the floor space. In total, with the additional two top floors, the project has added 50% to the lettable floorspace.

It is rare that a commercial office building sets an example in terms of how to repair a damaged streetscape or preserve a modest but valuable existing building. But, with the support of an enlightened client, this is what BGY have achieved.

Adaptive re-use and sustainability are high up on the profession’s agenda, and Buckley Gray Yeoman have demonstrated here that this kind of approach can be both commercially savvy and architecturally exciting.

This is carefully considered and unshowy architecture that delivers for its client – but also enhances and enriches its context.