Gallowgate Works
The cheapest sustainable building is the one already standing. We kept the frame, insulated inboard, and made one new move for light.
A 1928 brick warehouse kept, insulated inside, and opened up with two glazed gables.
The client had costed a demolition and a new build. We costed keeping it, and keeping it won by £310,000 before the embodied carbon was counted at all.
The existing building is a load-bearing brick shell with timber roof trusses at 4.8m centres. The brick was sound everywhere except the north gable. Insulating outboard would have hidden the brick that makes the building worth keeping, so the insulation is inboard, 140mm of wood fibre, and the cold bridge at every beam end is drawn, calculated and accepted rather than hidden.
The one new move is at the yard end: the failed north gable came down and was replaced by two glazed gables that follow the old roof line exactly. They bring daylight into the canteen and the top-floor studios, and from the street they read as the building’s old shape, filled with glass.
Inside, old work is left as found and new work is plywood, so it is always clear which is which. Twenty studios let within six weeks of completion in November 2024.
“We came in with a demolition price. We left with a costed case for keeping the building that was £310,000 cheaper, and the tenants moved in four weeks earlier than the new-build would have allowed.”
Start with a site visit
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