One Angel Court

Upwards and outwards

By reconstructing a 21-storey building around its original core, we maximised the lettable space for this commercial office development squeezed into a site in the heart of the City of London.

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One Angel Court Project summary

Client

Stanhope and Mitsui Fudosan

Key partners

Fletcher Priest, Alinea LLP, Waterman Structures, Waterman Building Services

Value

Confidential

Services provided

Construction, Construction management, Fit out

Sectors

Commercial, Mixed-use development, Offices

Locations

UK and Europe, UK - London and south-east England

Project timeline

Start date
2014
End date
2017
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Project story

Imagine demolishing an entire 21-storey building except for its concrete core. Not only that, but also increasing its height by three storeys. All while almost 200 neighbours including the Bank of England were overlooking you.

A massive challenge, but it also meant planning permission could be obtained for a new building of the same height. By retaining the core, the central tower could reach 27 storeys, rather than its original 21 storeys - or the 11 floors that would have been permitted had the building been fully demolished.

It made a huge difference to the client - around 11,500 square metres more high-grade, lettable office space than would have been achieved with an 11-storey building.

Project stats

11,500 sq m extra lettable space
186 neighbours overlooking the site

Points of note

Maximising space

To enable two more of the upper podium floors to be let as office space, we relocated the mechanical and electrical plant from the seventh storey to the basement. As the plant requires greater height than the office floors, we fixed all the 27 new floors above them at different levels from the floors in the original building. Lettable space was also increased by leaning the building's frame outwards until the tenth storey, when it straightens to vertical.

Benefiting from our fit out expertise

The Cat A fit out of the commercial offices was undertaken by our fit out specialists, Como. They were able to share logistics from hoists and cranes to the site’s clocking-in procedures on site. It also enabled us to overlap the final stages of construction work with the Cat A fit out, saving the client time and money.

Constrained logistics

Steel beams and columns used for the building’s construction were up to 12m long and had to be separately delivered and lifted into position one at a time. So that the drivers delivering the beams could safely navigate the narrow streets surrounding the site, we trained them on a practice track using a video representation of the road layout.

Being good neighbours

To minimise noise for the development’s neighbours, our team came up with an innovative solution and suspended acoustic screens around the site’s perimeter instead of using secondary glazing. This measure saved costs and reduced the number of noise complaints received.
Paul Dalton, Project Director, Construction

“Undertaking such a major refurbishment in the heart of the City was a significant challenge, but the time taken to develop detailed logistics strategies with the City of London and other key stakeholders has enabled the project to be successfully delivered.”

Paul Dalton Project Director
Paul Mynard, Senior Project Manager, Construction

“On a normal project of this size you wouldn’t get this sort of advance fit out activity happening while the shell and core contractors are still on site. It makes the transition so easy and smooth and it’s been great.”

Paul Mynard Senior Project Manager, Como

Tags:

Fit Out Construction Management UK and Europe Mixed-Use Development Offices

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