Eckersley O'Callaghan
We are a global team of structural engineers and facade engineers renowned for a commitment to sustainability, technical excellence, innovation and digital design. We push the boundaries of what is possible and our engineering experience covers every material, form, scale and use. We are committed to tackling the Climate Emergency by promoting sustainable use of materials and implementing and embedding circularity, resilience and low-carbon strategies into our designs.
9th Floor
236 Gray’s Inn Road
London
WC1X 8HB
Project Spotlight
London South Bank University
A retrofit first approach to sustainable building design, with the transformation of an outdated concrete office block to a vibrant new student hub for London Southbank University.
The project involved the redevelopment of the university’s existing 1970s building on London Road, which provided an internal area of 20,000m2 across four-storeys. The building had previously been used as teaching and office space, with an extremely cellular layout unfit for modern use. The new design repositions the building to become the campus’ Student Hub and includes lecture theatres, library, sports facilities and catering areas.
Design and construction works included carbon-fibre strengthening, existing structure verification and new structural additions of various scale. An additional 1,000m2 of accommodation has been created by retaining the original concrete frame, and infilling the lightwells with new floors.
By refurbishing and saving as much of the existing materials as possible, the cradle-to-gate embodied carbon component related to substructure and superstructure for the project is just 49 kgCO2e/m2. This value can be compared to the approximate structural components of LETI targets – about three and a half times less than the 179 kgCO2e/m2 2020 LETI target and just under a half that of the 105 kgCO2e/m2 2030 LETI target for education buildings.