KJ Tait Engineers were commissioned on the new headquarters building for the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG).
RCOG’s new home provides 60,000 ft2 of contemporary office space to support new ways of working for its 200+ staff, as well as conferencing facilities and a public café. It enables the College to provide a fully accessible building with an emphasis on health, wellbeing and sustainable design.
The site at 10-18 Union Street in the London Borough of Southwark comprises two existing buildings, of which the North is a converted hop warehouse dating from 1853 and the South was purpose-built for offices in the 1980’s. The building covers the majority of the existing courtyard with a new glazed atrium in order to provide a new main entrance and College reception/events space. Located within this atrium is a large helical stair that joins the two existing buildings, helping to address existing floor level differences, and creating a new dynamic, central sculptural feature.
This was a re-purpose of an existing office building and rather than strip out all of the existing services, a decision was made to re-use as much of the engineering services as possible. Exhaustive validation surveys of the condition of the existing plant allowed for informed decision making on what could be retained and what should be stripped out.