The old Police Section House at 40 Beak Street was demolished and replaced with a six-storey mixed-use building.
The basement was lowered to provide more useable space, requiring concrete underpinning to support adjacent roads and party walls. Surrounded by adjacent buildings, with two faces abutting party walls, a reinforced concrete flat slab solution provides unobstructed soffits maximising floor-to-ceiling heights and casting more natural light into the building. The span of the slab was maximised to provide only one line of internal columns, producing a relatively uninterrupted space.
We worked closely with the artist, Lee Simmons, to provide structural support for the cast aluminium artwork façade panels. Bespoke fixings and bracketry enabled the artwork to be mounted following the installation of the glazed bricks. As structural works neared completion, the sale of the building was agreed, and the future owner required substantial changes including the removal of a large proportion of the second floor slab. A combination of steelwork and concrete provide restraint to the façade and stiffen the columns, now spanning an additional storey. The slab edges have been made good and stiffened with a specially fabricated beams to coordinate with the proposed finishes.
Completed 2018.
