Liam Spencer is co-founder of Anomaly Architects
Over the past few years, the retrofit movement has grown arms and legs. A term that was once reserved for a fairly niche group of design and project teams now spans wide across the industry and beyond to a public audience. We have the replace-or-refurb debate over Marks & Spencer’s western Oxford Street store to thank – or blame – for much of this.
“I am here on behalf of all designers to shout from the rooftops that early contractor engagement is absolutely critical to retrofits”
‘Retrofit’ is no longer just a slightly more highbrow way of describing refurbishment. Take the £130m project to alter and extend retailer Fenwick’s former flagship London store. The contractor, Faithdean, along with the specialist, Erith, are playing significant structural gymnastics to meet Westminster council’s retrofit-first policy and, critically, retain the property’s viability as a prime West End product. With its jacked-up floor plates and columns, this could well have been a project where ambitions got lost in the leap from visionary idea to commercial reality. But they didn’t, and that is a great thing.
It is, however, just one success story in a field of projects that have stalled over budget tenders and misalignment between client and design and construction team. Even the best projects can end up in limbo.
Cultural pressures
Retrofit isn’t going away anytime soon. In fact, wider cultural and commercial attitudes are bringing it into sharper focus. Embodied carbon is now as key as any other project performance indicator, as whole-life carbon becomes a cornerstone of any worthwhile environmental, social and governance (ESG) statement.
Even more exciting, perhaps, is that this is all as relevant to occupiers and tenants as it is to developers and clients. Of course, operational carbon use is much easier for an incoming building user to comprehend, as its analogy with domestic power expenditure makes it relatable. But as the energy industry continues to make real headway towards a clean and sustainable grid supply, clients are left looking at what story their bricks and mortar tells. Companies care very much that their physical spaces align with their ESG narratives beyond energy use and ISO accreditations. And, just like that, retrofit enters centre-stage as a genuinely powerful way to address a lot of this market-relevant need.
Retrofit projects can be extremely fulfilling, creatively and technically, with some firms even adopting the ethos of retrofit-first. Not only is it the right thing to do, but an existing building, whether a Victorian warehouse or a 1960s office block, presents a rich canvas for inspired, creative output.
The dialogue between architects and contractors is of critical importance in creating appropriate, commercially viable and deliverable designs, but far too often this doesn’t happen. I am here on behalf of all designers to shout from the rooftops that early contractor engagement is absolutely critical to the success of retrofit projects.
So here’s the rallying cry: collaboration at an early stage has to become the norm if we want retrofit to become the norm, and not just a buzzword that sounds like the right thing to say.
