BACKGROUND The estate has a total office area of 305,000 sq ft. split between three buildings. The buildings were designed by Richard Seifert and built in 1980. The buildings are: 1. Grant Thornton House, completed in 1980, the building comprises 69,309 sq ft, with a typical square floorplate of 7,970 sq ft. 2. 40 Melton Street, the total area is approximately 116,070 sq ft, with a square floorplate size of 7,840 sq ft. 3. One Eversholt Street tower and podium, The buildings interconnect through the raised ground floor reception to the tower building. The total area is approximately 119,041 sq ft. Euston Station
The buildings are owned by a company called Sydney & London Properties Ltd. They represent the property investment interests of a private individual, Michael Gross. Over 90% of the income is secured by Network Rail Infrastructure Ltd and Grant Thornton Nominees Ltd. There are five other tenants. In 2012 Network Rail’s lease on the offices they occupy will come to an end and they will move to a new purpose built building in Milton Keynes, Quandrant:MK. The loss of a large portion of the clients renting space in the estate offer the owner a chance to rethink the design, and make changes to or replace the buildings.
Grant Thornton House
40 Melton Street
One Eversholt Street
COMMUNITIES WITH INPUT INTO THE BRIEF: The brief is to be thought through from the perspectives of the different communities who will use and interact with the buildings. These include: - SYDNEY & LONDON PROPERTIES LTD. making financial investment into the building. THE CLIENT - The companies renting the office space from the client for the purpose of creating a work space. - The workers within these companies - The workers maintaining the building, including those involved in building construction. - The workers employed by the client to maintain the buildings - Euston station management - Passengers travelling to and from underground and national rail connections at Euston station who pass through the space or stop there. - Local people visiting the site to use the amenities - shops, food outlets, etc. - Local authority - Local flora (trees, green space), and fauna (birds, ??) - People who live in the station forecourt, who congregate there, and practice work of a different sort - begging, selling magazines.
BRIEF FROM THE CLIENT - SYDNEY & LONDON PROPERTIES LTD. The client’s estate of office buildings were constructed in 1980, and now need updating. The total floor area is 305,000 sq ft. The client’s business model for making the investment in this project is constructed over a particular time period (what is limit). It depends on a particular amount of rental income from the buildings. The rental income comes from an unspecified group of companies who require office space. These companies are not yet know, therefore their particular needs cannot be specified. So the building is required to offer space that is as flexible as possible, offering a suitable office solution to companies undertaking different types of office work. Further, it needs to allow a certain scale of change that the occupying businesses will want to undertake. The building needs to be an attractive prospect to a prospective rentee. v Cost, budget. The building need to be constructed in as cost effective way as possible, requiring as little maintencance as possible. The building need to require as little energy input as possible.
INPUT INTO THE BRIEF FROM THE FOLLOWING INTERESTED PARTIES Euston London London Camden
railway station Underground Buses Council (local authority)
SPECIFIC COMPANY TO BE ACOCMODATED IN THE NEW BUILDING??? Big issues magazine - the office by day, drop in centre by night?
CRUCIAL QUALITIES to be realised in the brief: - The precense of nature is to be part of the atmosphere of the builidng. - The building is to have a variety of spaces for the worker to move between as they wish - The building is to offer worker the opportunity to interact with it, and change it, adjust the environment it creates to his/ her own needs. - The building should communicate to the inhabitants a ‘gesture’ of how it can be effectively occupied, so that the achievements of different wishes from the space are achieved intuitively. - The space should enable social relationships, both people meeting formally, and informal encounters - The building should be able to accomodate difference, and enable conflicting behaviours and individual identities to inhabit the same space.
interested party - THE FUTURE After the building has been built, and the investory has realised his investment and departed from the scene, the building will continue to have an impact.
AGENDA 1. Design to satisfy clients brief - a cost effective building solution for an office block that would allow the maximum amount of flexibility. For example: - an organization occupies two floors of an office block and wants to have a connections between the floors. The plan might be to use a frame for the building itself, and then a system of inserted element which could be swapped, changed, as required. Like a unitized façade system but with a variety of different window options… 2. Design to contribute to urban richness. At the city scale think about how to design buildings that allow (or hold themselves) as diverse a collection of functions. Eateries of all sorts (canteen to café to restaurant), shops of all sizes (large and diverse to tiny and specialized), schools, doctors, facilities of all sorts, swimming pools, gardens. Spaces for all sorts of weather and activity. How can these be mixed? 3. Design to achieves qualities for communities not represented in clients brief. What would be a strategy for practice to create a building that achieves the aims of the people who are funding it, but also increases capacities for the vulnerable communities who are impacted on by that building? How to achieve two aims with one piece of design? Think about funding and the motivation of investors – are there hidden values that they could realise through helping the vulnerable communities?