LONDON LOVES: The Brunel Building
Standing opposite Paddington station, the newly completed Brunel Building sits proudly adjacent to Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s first bridge – Bishop’s Bridge. The building’s design references Brunel’s Great Western Railway. The building offers flexible workspace, and for the first time since the Paddington Basin was opened more than 200 years ago, the public have access to a new, tree-lined canal towpath that links Paddington Basin with Little Venice. Some of our team members at Greenway Associates are locals in this area, and they are loving the newfound accessibility!
Designed by Fletcher Priest Architects, the project vastly improves the public spaces around the building. The Bondi Green restaurant invites passersby in for a cool cocktail or decadent meal, while the building’s large south-facing reception and terrace can be fully exposed to the canal-side, should London’s weather decide to play along!
One can fully appreciate the challenging nature of this site - a tight and compact site, with the two Bakerloo tube lines running below, canal out front and a functioning underground railway surrounding the entire site. Hats off to the structural engineers for this project - Arup - and to their the innovative ”diagrid exoskeleton”. The exoskeleton not only stays in keeping with the engineering heritage of the site, but also provides column-free floorplates and 20% shading to the façade, helping to reduce energy demand. Of course, it enables more light and great views too. (PS. If you’re interested in exoskeletons, you may wish to read our article on the Stone Exoskeleton trend we’ve spotted!)
We were also very excited (yes, even Quantity Surveyors get very excited occasionally) to see that an aquifer thermal energy storage (ATES) system has been utilised. Two 180m-deep boreholes provide low carbon heating and cooling to the building, and in an even cooler stroke of genius, there’s a giant plug sculpture at the top of one the boreholes! We really love this art sculpture by Gavin Turk - it gives the feeling that should the plug be pulled out, the whole canal might just drain away. If you’ve got a spare minute or two, you will enjoy watching this giant plug being made.