With its scheme for east London’s Benyon Estate, the practice has created a potent melting pot for start-ups and small businesses, says Jon Astbury. Photography David Grandorge, Nick Kane 

‘I do not use the term “place-making”. Who knows what it means? But Edward Benyon used it, and it’s the first time I’ve ever heard anyone use it and mean it,’ says Henley Halebrown partner Simon Henley. We meet in the trendy café-cum-workplace of the De Beauvoir Block, a series of new workspaces among which this seemingly normal café is actually the bottom rung of tenureship: for £100 a month you can come here and work all day, every day. The Benyon to whom Henley refers is the manager, not just of the café or block, but of the entire estate sandwiched between Southgate and Kingsland roads. A descendant of the De Beauvoirs, this land has been in Benyon’s family for over 200 years, and was first developed in the mid-19th century. 

The bulk of the estate and its surroundings are residential, dominated by streets of well-mannered terraces save for the late 1960s De Beauvoir Estate at its southern edge. As Henley, a former resident, tells it, the area was ‘a monoculture … a sort of no-man’s land between Islington and Kingsland Road. It was a place to live but not to work, go to school or shop.’ When Benyon was brought in to assess the estate some 10 years ago, this is what stuck out, and the subsequent roll-out of a ‘place-making’ strategy has sought to seed shops and pubs, build new schools, (with which Henley Halebrown and Lisa Shell Architects have been involved), and, crucially, to provide places to work.

With most of the area’s industrial buildings focused to the estate’s south-east corner around Kingsland Basin, these warehouses running from number 90 to 100 De Beauvoir Road, a stone’s throw from De Beauvoir Square, are something of an anomaly. No one is entirely sure of their history: Henley places them somewhere around the 1920s and Benyon cannot be certain whether his family built them or if the land was leased to someone else. As a result, they have become somewhat muddled over the years, serving as everything from a print works to makeshift residential units. With the leases bought back from their owners, Benyon and Henley Halebrown set about their redevelopment, one that was met at planning with some confusion: such is the sad state of affairs that Benyon’s decision to not squeeze every ounce of value out of the land via residential development seemed an alien one.

Numbers 92, 94 and 96 De Beauvoir Road now stand complete, merged into one internally but keeping their distinct street frontages and branded De Beauvoir Block – complete with a logo that riffs on the Bauhaus’s. Work on the adjacent unit at number 98 is currently underway and 100 will follow in a future phase. The block houses 33 office spaces, separated into ‘tiers’ ranging from the members’ café and a co-working ‘incubator’ to rentable office space at various floor areas and lease lengths.

It is this act of both accepting and merging the three units, a ‘morass’, as Henley terms it, that has guided the design’s fundamental moves. During the first phase of the project, the yard, which Henley calls ‘a collective space’, albeit not a public one, was created by carving out a formerly internal single-storey hall space that cuts through most of 92 and 94, bookended by number 90 at one end and a new walkway at the other. The café looks directly onto this space at ground level and many of the office spaces above have visual connections that rely on it.

The yeard sets the tone for the whole scheme, marrying a sweeping spatial gesture with the minutiae of how quite simple and everyday materials play off one another

It is the crux of the scheme, combining both the new spatial ideas with a laissez-faire attitude to restoration and replacement, only undertaking it where necessary. Windows, for example, are a mix of the old, the newer and the newest, all united by thin black frames. Fletton brickwork, previously hidden inside the hall, is now the yard’s primary material language.

Henley says: ‘It’s the crap brick; but it ends up being the rather poetic brick.’ Its pink-to-red colour variation has been picked up by the colour of a new concrete ‘mat’ underfoot. None of this comes over as overwrought or fetishistic. Henley explains how it is not only about leaving what was existing and suitable but making it just as easy to update or change in decades to come. This generous, considered space sets the tone for the whole scheme, marrying a sweeping spatial gesture with the minutiae of how quite simple and everyday materials play off one another.

Existing interiors, too, have been left largely as they were, with many already restored in the 1960s. Original cores have been maintained and extended and a lift added, and essentially every single piece of new circulation added has been external, a move very much intended. It is in these spaces, as well as the courtyard, that Henley sees interaction and a real sense of life emerging (regardless of the weather) rather than in some WeWork-style ‘leisure’ area with table games and free beer. These simple walkways provide access to the more private, new steel-frame and cross-laminated timber unit at the courtyard’s southern end, and serve to connect the front and back of the block at its northern end. Here, this walkway becomes decking for the bulk of the project’s second phase and another of its fundamental moves: populating the roof with a series of black shed-studios.

Corralled on the rooftop, these small, EPDM-cloaked units recall Henley Halebrown’s 1999 Shepherdess Walk scheme, which Henley describes as introducing a little bit of suburbia into a ‘grittier’ bit of London. While at Shepherdess Walk the upper-storey additions were loft apartments, here they resemble a rooftop design fair, with glimpses into various start-ups working at sewing machines, drawing pads and computers. But, despite their use, it was still a key aim to lend them a domestic mood, both through their scale and their arrangement along the ample circulation space that winds through them. So far, this pursuit of neighbourliness seems to be paying off: doors are left open, and business collaborations are allegedly afoot.

Materially, the use of EPDM is inspired. Not only does it have the rather on-trend, Vantablack-like effect of dissolving forms into almost scale-less silhouettes when the lighting is right, it speaks to the original structure’s messiness, with the remarkable ability of looking crisp and yet somewhat ad-hoc – in the best possible way. These are neatly crafted timber and stud wall units (the CLT and steel method of the first phase would not have been as economical a choice) and, as at Simon Conder’s Dungeness Beach house, these fresh timber interiors are the perfect foil for their dark wrapping. 

But for all their boldness, from street level these sheds are little more than a 2m-high black hat atop the existing volumes. A need to keep the massing relatively low means the sheds are all arranged so that their peaks face inwards, ‘like meringues’, as Henley describes them. 

Above number 92, things break slightly from the overriding sense of restraint, with a new attic storey framed by a concrete colonnade that aligns with the brick piers of the warehouse below. This more dramatic intervention still recognises the importance of not disrupting the roofline of the original run of buildings below.

This project is a rather uncommon and exclusive one, but an encouraging extension of the ideas Henley Halebrown brings to every project. These may be offices, but they have been thought out as places to dwell as much as anything, and it’s exciting to think what could be achieved were this thinking applied to a project blending multiple uses. We’ll soon find out: Henley Halebrown’s vast mixed-use scheme around the corner on Kingsland Road is underway – and De Beauvoir Block has set the bar high.

Start on site January 2016 Completion July 2017 Gross internal floor area New build: 742m2, refurb: 1,771m2 Construction cost £5 million Construction cost per m2 £ 2,004 Architect Henley Halebrown Structural engineer MMP Design Planning consultant CMA Planning M&E consultant AJ Energy Interior design (café and incubator co-work space) Stella Concept Cost consultant Castle-Davis Approved building inspector Salus Al Main contractor Sullivan Brothers Construction CAD software used Vectorworks Annual CO2 emissions 35.4 kg/m2

In a recent AJ article BCO senior vice-president Katrina Kostic Samen called for working environments that could respond to a more ‘diverse workforce’, be that diversity of gender, age, culture or size. The office remains a pretty standard product. Inside, space is generic and homogenised. So, it falls to the tenant to address the human condition, and adjust the shell to the way we work.

The De Beauvoir Block, I hope, is different. Our ambition was to establish an intentional working community where congregation, chance encounters and collaboration would be the norm. The café plays a part in this but it’s the courtyard, bridges and rooftop pathways that create an informality, and the rooftop studios a domesticity, that quite literally invites neighbourliness between tenants. As we had hoped, inhabitants leave doors open. The sound of conversation may be understood by neighbours to be a friendly gesture. People have begun to collaborate. Perception plays a role. The architecture is made in response to temperament and physiological and emotional needs.

The design and its communication took account of the historic setting of nearby De Beauvoir Square and its listed Neo-Jacobean houses. The De Beauvoir Block’s architecture is quiet. Low-tech building techniques indicate how elementary the construction of an office might be, ensuring that these 100-year-old buildings remain robust and can endure. 

The design exploits the latency of buildings, the rational application of heterogeneity, and combines this with the introduction of a single, central outdoor space.

Simon Henley, co-founder, Henley Halebrown

The rationale for the project was to create within De Beauvoir Block much-sought-after office space in a style and specification that would appeal to our target market of creative industries. The buildings had all been sold off on long lease in the 1920s and therefore were coming to the end of these leases and as a result were in various states of disrepair.

The brief therefore was to take the above into account when redesigning the refurbished space while making sure that the rooftop extensions did not detract from the aesthetics and architecture of the otherwise beautiful Edwardian terrace of buildings.

It was agreed that we would create a courtyard in the middle of the scheme, which would be the central focal point of the development and the communal space. This has been a particular success, with the communal space extending to a café immediately adjacent to this.

The main added value for us has been the creation of the creative hub, which has provided the working environment wanted by our tenants. This has also provided space for smaller companies, which enjoy sharing the building and the communal space with larger companies. 

The smaller units within the rooftop extensions are about 314 sq ft and are in such demand we have a waiting list of companies and people wanting to move in.

Edward Benyon, manager, The Benyon Estate

The sustainability strategy for De Beauvoir Block focused on retaining and revealing good levels of natural light and ventilation within the Edwardian industrial buildings. This was achieved through selective demolition, thermal upgrades to renovated elements and rooftop studio additions with high levels of thermal insulation and air-tightness. 

The development features improved insulation and air-tightness standards, when compared against the compliance requirements of Part L 2010. The extensions, constructed in recyclable steelwork and FSC/PEFC certified timber, also provide a new roof covering and insulation across the whole of the existing building, where large areas were uninsulated. The proposed measures reduce the annual carbon dioxide emissions of the site by 9,882kgCO2, which equates to a reduction of 31.3 per cent. 

Air source heat pumps have been included for the development to provide space heating and cooling. It has been estimated that the proposed heat pump systems reduce the annual carbon dioxide emissions of the site by 3,621kgCO2, which equates to a reduction of 16.7 per cent.

The incorporation of the energy efficiency measures, such as LED light fittings, low water use fittings and heat pumps equates to a minimum reduction of 42.8 per cent against the TER 2010 for the scheme, exceeding the 40 per cent improvement requirement under the London Plan 2011.

John Simpson, managing director, AJ Energy

The De Beauvoir Block was conceived as a settlement of lightweight rooftop studios atop a terrace of masonry buildings. These new studios are timber structures constructed on a horizontal grid of steel beams, which bear on the original brickwork. 

This initial structural and material concept was developed through the detailing of the new building to the rear of number 92. This two-storey, three-bay structure completes the south-east corner of the yard. A grid of steel beams – the chassis – rests on the masonry flank walls and the rebuilt garden wall. An upper storey of prefabricated engineered timber, shaped to make three truncated pyramids, insulated and sheathed in black EPDM rubber, was built off the grid. 

This timber element is expressed both as a volume from within and as an object from below, the latter accentuated by the setback to the rear, where a skylight fills the void between the timber soffit and the exposed brick garden wall on which light falls. The upper storey is served by a deck. The façade to the yard is glazed. 

Explorations into the layering of construction materials in axonometric, one-point perspective and in detail meant this small new building became the prism through which the detail of the scheme as a whole could be understood and developed – the scheme in microcosm. The timber is always expressed above the steel chassis, which in turn bears on the masonry. Openings and stair voids allow glimpses through and an understanding of the construction.

The EPDM of the rooftop studios wraps under the timber decks, forming a continuous new roof, mitigating the need for gutters and downpipes and allowing the silhouettes to be read more clearly.

Neil Rodgers, associate, Henley Halebrown

Tags Building study Henley Halebrown Office Workplace

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