RETROFIT | 1 FINSBURY AVENUE BACK IN SERVICE Arup reused as much MEP plant as possible when transforming a 1980s City office into a stripped-back space aimed at Londons dynamic tech sector. Andy Pearson looks at how embodied energy use at 1 Finsbury Avenue was minimised in a major 60m retrofit W hen it was built, 1 Finsbury Avenue was a pioneer of hightech, high-end office buildings. Designed by Arup Associates and built in 1984, at the time of the stock market Big Bang, the eight-storey spec-office building was one of the first to be completed as part of Londons Broadgate development. The office with its deep floor plates illuminated by a central glazed atrium and distinctive, glazed, black steel faade, featuring its prominent diagonal bracing and brise soleil was intended for a single finance tenant. Almost 40 years on, and 1 Finsbury Avenue is still a pioneering development. It now has listed building status; its banking tenant has moved out; and it has undergone a major refurbishment designed by architect Allford Hall Monaghan Morris (AHMM) to make the building attractive to a new type of tenant the silicon-tech crowd from nearby Old Street and Shoreditch. Radically, rather than gut the building and rebuild it anew, the focus of its refurbishment has been to reuse as much of the original as practical to extend the life of this office. Elements that would normally be replaced in an office refurbishment have been renovated and reused, including 90% of the central plant. Reusing the plant was hard work for everyone, which couldnt have been undertaken without a team effort, says Mike Beaven, director and Fellow of Arup, the projects building services engineers. The refurbished building features a new paredback aesthetic. Ceilings have been removed from the office floors; the basement car park has been replaced with cycle parking and showers; the basement squash courts are now a twoscreen cinema; and the roof has been opened up to provide an eighth-floor outside terrace. Externally, the biggest change is that the ground floor has been opened up to make the building more permeable, with the addition of retail units, cafes and restaurants, which open onto the street and to the atrium. Developing a building services solution that used much of the existing services was quite a challenge. The eight-storey building had been occupied from completion by investment bank UBS Warburg. During that time, the original building services systems had undergone multiple interventions to adapt them to the changing needs of its tenant, including conversion of the original overhead variable air volume (VAV) air conditioning system to an underfloor system. More major interventions included flooring over the atrium at Level 3 to create a dealing floor supported by a data centre squeezed PROJECT TEAM Client: Joint venture between British Land and GIC MEP consultant: Arup Allford Hall Monaghan Morris Arup Equals Arup 26 July 2021 www.cibsejournal.com CIBSE July 21 pp26-30 1 Finsbury Avenue.indd 26 25/06/2021 16:23