A trio of refurbishment projects fall under the spotlight this month, each with a very different objective. First is a project by Boots to inject a modern working environment into its 1960s HQ building in Nottingham (above and bottom right), and second (top right) a project to maximise space at Birmingham University’s School of Physics and Astronomy. Over the page, Greater London House is restored to its original splendour.

Boots headquarters, Nottingham

‘Out with the old and in with the new’ is a proverb the facilities team at Boots The Chemist could relate to when they set about refurbishing the company’s 1960s headquarters building in Nottingham.

A 30-year-old building, designed by US architect Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, is one of two that now make up the headquarters. The second, built in 1998, is now linked to the first by a connecting corridor.

After an engineer’s report concluded that the infrastructure of the 1960s building was coming to the end of its life, Boots decided to take the opportunity to create a working environment that would suit its new business culture.

‘The most rewarding part of the project is that it is a building in which strategic objectives are a success,’ says Tim Allen of architect DEGW, which worked alongside the facilities team on the project. ‘Staff couldn’t wait to move in.’

The biggest problem the team encountered was working with a listed building. ‘We had the same goals and ideas for both buildings but they had to work within the constraints of the grade II* listing,’ he says.

The new look interior has lost the high screens that once divided staff from each other and executive offices now function as meeting rooms. To feed cabling to desks, raised floors were required, but conservation demands meant the slim floor zones could not be deepened. So a ‘circulation’ area was added around the floor space that did not require cabling.

Project team enquiries:

architect and interior design DEGW 301

structural engineer Mott MacDonald 302

services engineer Roger Preston & Partners 303

project and construction manager Mace 304

Physics dept, Birmingham University

The School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Birmingham is to graduate to new look premises with not a mortar board in sight.

The third phase of the £1 million scheme to refurbish several separate buildings dating from 1908, and reorganise the facilities, is set for completion this autumn.

Phases one and two, completed during term breaks in 1998, have already been branded a success by both lecturers and students alike, who have instantly warmed to the new look colour and lighting schemes.

Rod Hatton, team architect at Corstorphine and Wright, says the driving force behind the move and refurbishment was to increase the space available at the university.

‘We needed to make more efficient use of space to release some areas back to the university,’ he explained.

Working to a tight budget was one of the toughest challenges according to Hatton: ‘We had to be very hard-nosed about the amount of work we did. We had to be clear minded about what was essential and what was not.’

A further challenge coming out of the refurbishment was adapting the laboratories (above) to the new requirements of the school: ‘The benching had to be flexible enough to change from one term to another and set up for different experiments.’

Project team enquiries

architect Corstorphine and Wright 305

structural engineer Cox Turner Morse 306

M&E engineer Couch Perry & Wilkes 307

quantity surveyor Northcroft 308

main contractor William Sapcote & Sons 309

Greater London House, north London

The recently refurbished Greater London House in Camden is a building as famous for its Egyptian style façade as it is for the two 2.5m-tall bronze-cast black cats that guard the entrance.

The building has something of a checkered history, beginning life in the 1920s as the Carreras cigarette factory, and reaching near ruin in the 1990s after it was stripped of its façade and converted into offices. These quickly slipped into disrepair.

Many would say the building has now had its second lease of life. It was refurbished in 1996 by owner Resolution GLH, which restored the building back to its former glory in a bid to attract clients to its American-style loft conversion offices. There are now four principle tenants and no empty space.

People with a superstitious nature may think the cats had gifted the building one of their nine lives.

Brian Reynolds, director of Resolution GLH, says the hardest part of the refurbishment – apart from tracing the whereabouts of the two cats – was working in an occupied building.

‘We had to work around 100,000 people,’ he says ‘But we managed to do this by sectioning areas off. It was relatively painless.’

The biggest technical challenge was the installation of the air conditioning. This is supplied to the offices via four risers located in the building’s atriums. The air conditioning is optional to the clients but so far no one has refused it.

Project team enquiries

architect Finch Foreman 310

structural engineer MJM Associates 311

M&E engineer Fulcrum Consulting 312

quantity surveyor Press and Starky 313

main contractor Schal 314