Often the most sustainable approach to building involves taking underperforming existing buildings and retrofitting them to achieve current standards for energy use and user satisfaction, minimising embodied carbon while reducing energy use.

When a successful local business needed to move to larger premises, they decided to look at buying a dilapidated building that could be both upgraded to suit their particular commercial requirements and retrofitted to achieve their aspiration for a highly sustainable building. We were able to quickly do an appraisal assessing both works that needed to be done to provide the spaces and facilities for their business operation and highlight the opportunities for retrofitting the existing shell into a highly sustainable building, with low energy use and low running costs.

After stripping the building back to its primary structure, the design utilises the existing ground floor slab for the process areas including large full-height spaces extending up through a new mezzanine floor to accommodate the administration areas. A new roof added on the existing portal frame structure along with new internal wall linings to retained brick perimeter walls provides high levels of insulation and airtightness, a large photovoltaic array on the south-facing roof area provides electricity that can be directly used to power the machinery, a heat pump gives primary space heating, a mixed mode ventilation system including roof-mounted stacks introduces fresh air into the deep plan, high-performance windows and rooflights provide plentiful daylighting throughout the building and a lobbied delivery bay reduces heat losses.