Civic Engineer associate Jessica Foster took the audience through two projects – Quadrant Arcade and Canon Green, emphasising that conservation of energy and carbon was ‘absolutely vital’ to keep global emissions down and that construction has a big part to play in that. The firm’s work with John Robertson Architects at Canon Green near Cannon Street station included detailed loading analyses, adding two floors to the top, increasing approximately 10% lettable office space, replacing a dated entrance lobby and adding a new bar and restaurant and office space, as well as creating cycle parking for 100s of bikes. Crucially, it convinced the client to carry out significant testing with no guarantees that the solution would work. The Quadrant Arcade on Regent Street, moreover, involved removing a central column at the front of the entrance whilst remaining functional, again, transferring loads and rendering it a much more useful and attractive destination in the process. Since some 80% of the buildings we will have in 2050 have already been built, 'the greenest building is one that is already built’, said Foster. ‘But that doesn't mean that we should stop improving them'  

Finally, Purcell Partner David Hills showed his practice’s work at the Julia and Hans Rausing Room at the National Gallery, a careful reconstruction of a historic interior that was something of a ‘belt and braces conservation project’ in that it showed respect to its heritage but also introduces modern environmental controls into the original Barry fabric ‘quite seamlessly’. The scheme, finished just before lockdown, was able to draw upon a ‘treasure trove’ of drawings and even a painting by Giuseppi Gabrielli dating from 1868. ‘That gave us a very good idea of what the gallery actually looked like in its heyday’, said Hills, including its detailed internal decoration and early ‘revolutionary’ environmental system drawing outside air, in, conditioned over heating ducts.

A discussion session about the projects and wider conservation issues included WSP director Audrey McIver, who said one of the biggest challenges in this arena is often a lack of knowledge about original buildings. ‘You need that level of understanding of risk mitigation’, she said, ‘and not just in terms of cost and design but also in terms of how it might affect the programme’.

Watch the webinar recording