Imagine how putting nature first could transform workspaces forever

‘After many years overcoming significant economic and planning constraints, the project achieved a BREEAM Excellent rating and an energy reduction of 50%. The project was envisaged partly as a research exercise, to investigate the interaction between users and their building post-handover, and the new knowledge is now being exploited in Cullinan Studio’s professional work.’

━━ ‘Retrofit for Purpose’, ed. Prenoyre & Prasad, RIBA Publishing

Project Design

By reusing and repurposing existing structures where we can, we have the opportunity to reduce the overall embodied carbon of buildings. Current measuring shows that buildings are responsible for 39% of global energy related carbon emissions. Whilst 28% of this can be attributed to operational emissions, 11% is from the materials and processes used to construct new buildings.

However, converting a building from one use to another, and ensuring low emissions once occupied, comes with challenges. And this was no different for our own retrofit project to transform a dilapidated canal-side warehouse into our new studio in 2012.

Now named Foundry in a nod to its Victorian life as an iron works, the warehouse was in poor condition and required radical change to become our new studio.

We designed a new steel structure to prevent the building from continuing to fall towards the canal, and to retain and celebrate the locally-listed timber roof trusses that provide a stunning canopy over the first floor office space. A new void between canal-level and street-level floors unifies the studio and reveals the scale of the canal elevation’s double-height windows, allowing generous views of the peaceful canal basin and maximising daylight. The dual aspect office has opening windows on both sides to enable natural ventilation. Floors, walls and roof are super-insulated using recycled newspaper. An air-source heat pump housed in the overrun of the old lift shaft provides hot water and underfloor heating, and photovoltaic panels on the roof provide electricity.

Our solution retained almost 80% of the existing building fabric whilst providing us with a naturally ventilated, healthy workplace, and helping us to reduce our energy use by 50% compared to our previous office.

We have continued to monitor our energy use to understand what effects our day-to-day office activities have on our carbon footprint, and have made adjustments in response. But equally crucial to us is the wellbeing of our workforce. Encouraged by the results of a Reading University research project that showed good levels of satisfaction when measuring the impact of daylight, temperature and sound on our office life, we wanted to take it one step further. We undertook a more comprehensive survey of our working habits and how our environment affected our wellbeing. We realised a need for more flexibility within our open plan space. Simple measures such as foldable screens and new (second-hand) furniture to create a variety of new workspaces; more plants to provide a healthy connection with nature; and the reorganisation of office and personal storage spaces to free desks of clutter have gone a long way to maintaining and improving happiness, and thereby the productivity of our team.

We are taking this first-hand knowledge of retrofitting, measuring and improving the workplace to our clients, with our bespoke consultation methods.

Foundry Co-Working Hub

In 2021, with homeworking now a permanent part of our culture going forward, we took the opportunity to create a co-working hub at the Foundry, welcoming several organisations looking to expand their networks and collaborate on joint initiatives.

The Foundry has since become a thriving multi-disciplinary hub for innovative organisations working in the built environment – reflecting the collaborations needed in the construction industry going forward.

Project Awards

• CIBSE Building Performance Awards Finalist (2015)

• RICS London Award - Design Through Innovation (2014)

• AJ Retrofit Awards - Offices Under £5m (2013)