The building presented extraordinary challenges for the design team.  Principal among these was how to transform a cellular arrangement of over 660 rooms into a contemporary workplace that supported clear communication, to overhaul its entire system of electrical, mechanical and hydraulic services, and to vastly improve its acoustics and security – all while maintaining its historic fabric and character.

The key lay in rationalising and adapting the building’s layout – of long, paired corridors around large lightwells – to provide for a variety of workplaces that supporting collaborative and connected working practices.

Regular and transparent engagement with Westminster’s Conservation Officer and Historic England provided constant review and refinements to the range of design interventions.
Key elements of the design included:

• creating new structural openings to provide connections between rooms and with the axial corridors,
• opening up junctions between corridors to create lively, engaging social spaces for informal meetings and breaks, and to assist in orientation,
• enclosing all services in suspended rafts running alongside corridors to preserve key historic views and spaces,
• creating new, consolidated plant rooms on the roof or within internal areas in the top floor, and external service runs disguised between perforated metal panels,
• using secondary glazing to provide enhanced thermal and acoustic performance and security, all carefully designed to fit within the existing historic frames of over two thousand individual windows, and
• revealing and restoring historic features, materials and finishes, from sculpted timber and plaster, colourful mosaic and terrazzo, cast iron access panels and ornate marble mantlepieces