A provider of rented retired homes has acquired an apartment development in London. Birchgrove has bought a total of 78 apartments in Hampton Court growing its portfolio across the South-East. The £39 million deal has been completed with Octagon Developments, who design and build high quality homes throughout Southern England.
Mace has completed the UCL Marshgate building, part of the first phase of UCL’s new campus at East Bank on Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. Marshgate is UCL’s single largest building to date providing over 35,000sqm of cross-disciplinary teaching, research and learning spaces over eight floors. Designed by architects Stanton Williams
J Murphy & Sons has been appointed to develop a new railway station for Chelmsford’s Beaulieu development in Essex. It is the second of two contracts awarded by Network Rail. The £124 million contract includes main construction work for the new station on behalf of partners Essex County Council and
Housing association B3Living has secured a £50 million sustainability-linked loan from Lloyds Bank to build hundreds of new, affordable properties. Its sustainability-linked loan facility will be measured against three KPIs, which will see B3Living receive discounted funding relative to its performance as against agreed targets. The first KPI relates to
Morgan Sindall has completed work on a new school in Warwick. Kenilworth School and Sixth Form is part of Warwick District Council’s plans to increase school places and improve facilities in the region. The project involved Kenilworth School & Sixth Form relocating from two existing sites to a new facility
Westminster City Council has given its backing to Squire & Partners-designed proposals for a 10-storey luxury care facility near the River Thames and Smith Square. The practice’s plans for care-home operator Medici Lifecare will see the demolition of 1930s Art Deco block Dean Bradley House, which stands on Horseferry Road,
Developer Endurance Land have received the go-ahead to retrofit and extend a 1990s office near London’s Old Street Junction. The updated 35-storey building on 99 City Road will serve as an innovation hub for tech clients as it provides 700,000 sq ft of workspace. Putting a new spin on the
Developer Regal London have submitted plans for a Purpose-Built Student Accommodation (PBSA) scheme on ‘Wembley Greenaway’, in the London Borough of Brent. The proposed scheme will open up the railway lands parallel to High Road, Wembley for the first time, and will provide safe and inclusive green space. The proposals
Top 10 homebuilder Keepmoat has launched the third in a series of work placement opportunities, aimed at attracting women across the UK into the homebuilding industry. Keepmoat has partnered with Women into Construction (WiC) and the Home Builders Federation (HBF) and eight other home builders to provide candidates with opportunities
Zentia, a pioneering leader in ceiling systems, is thrilled to announce the highly anticipated launch of three new creative additions to Sonify. This innovative release introduces an array of cutting-edge features that redefine the possibilities of acoustic design, enhancing both aesthetics and functionality. Launched on 6th September, these three new
A provider of rented retired homes has acquired an apartment development in London. Birchgrove has bought a total of 78 apartments in Hampton Court growing its portfolio across the South-East. The £39 million deal has been completed with Octagon Developments, who design and build high quality homes throughout Southern England. Octagon Developments will deliver the apartments on a turnkey basis by 2025. This is Birchgrove’s eighth development with their equity partners Bridges Fund Management and follows the successful exit of its first two neighbourhoods to M&G last year. The debt is provided by Beaufort Capital and is their fourth deal with Birchgrove. The project’s GDV is forecast to increase to £68m once all units are fully let. The development will provide 78 contemporary, self-contained assisted living one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments available to independently minded renters aged over 65, together with extensive communal facilities including a restaurant, club room, licensed bar, wellness suite, library and landscaped gardens. Honor Barratt, Chief Executive, Birchgrove said: “Our new site at Hampton Court will encapsulate all the benefits of the Birchgrove offering: beautiful, purpose-built apartments, a flexible rental model, publicly accessible communal spaces and a development that frees up homes for local families. Imagine being able to sit on your balcony and look over the Thames into the back garden of Henry VIII – who wouldn’t want to live like that? “With more and more retirees looking to rent, London is firmly in our sights to expand our portfolio, and having secured sites in Chiswick and Hampton Court we look forward to announcing further exciting news in the capital soon.” Building, Design & Construction Magazine | The Choice of Industry Professionals
Mace has completed the UCL Marshgate building, part of the first phase of UCL’s new campus at East Bank on Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. Marshgate is UCL’s single largest building to date providing over 35,000sqm of cross-disciplinary teaching, research and learning spaces over eight floors. Designed by architects Stanton Williams to provide new spaces for collaborative thinking, Marshgate unites activities across the arts, technology and science under one roof. Enabling students and staff to immerse themselves in innovative activities and cutting edge research. The floors are clustered into a series of ‘neighbourhoods’, each with its own double-height collaboration space to encourage cross-disciplinary knowledge share. The lower levels of the building include a network of publicly accessible spaces, with a café, exhibitions, art programmes, and activities, designed to draw the public into the heart of the building. The building creates a key interface with the wider Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park community. Its publicly accessible lower floors feature a curated programme of art and activities, including works by local artists, and landscaped outdoor settings providing a newly animated and accessible public realm. During construction Mace partnered with the UCL Plastics Waste Innovation Hub to replace all single-use plastics with fully reusable modular hoarding panels, recognised by LLDC as the new standard for all hoarding across Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. Reflecting UCL’s overarching mission to embed sustainability through its campus and culture, durability and energy efficiency were central to the design approach. The BREEAM Excellent-rated building is powered in part by renewable electricity, with the aim to reach net zero carbon by 2035 in keeping with the district’s wider sustainable energy strategy. Terry Spraggett, MD Public Sector Construction, Mace said: “Together with UCL, the project team and our supply chain partners’ we’ve delivered an outstanding building. We are immensely proud to be part of this journey. Marshgate is exceptional in its vision – championing collaboration not just between the students and academics but including the wider public. Working closely with the community has been key for us to ensure we create long-term social value for the wider campus. I can’t wait to see Marshgate open and all the great ideas and innovations come to life.” Building, Design & Construction Magazine | The Choice of Industry Professionals
J Murphy & Sons has been appointed to develop a new railway station for Chelmsford’s Beaulieu development in Essex. It is the second of two contracts awarded by Network Rail. The £124 million contract includes main construction work for the new station on behalf of partners Essex County Council and Chelmsford City Council. This phase of the work includes the construction for the new station facility, the associated infrastructure, and progress towards opening to train services for the benefit of passengers. As part of a wider regeneration scheme, the new station has been designed to support the economic development of the Beaulieu area and its construction will include: Beaulieu Park station is currently expected to be completed by end of 2025. Once open, the station will be managed by Greater Anglia and served by its fleet of new trains with services into London. Katie Frost, Network Rail’s route director for Anglia said: “J Murphy and Sons have made an excellent start with the enabling and civils works and this contract award will allow us to seamlessly continue to deliver this amazing new station for Chelmsford without pause. “Beaulieu Park station is an excellent example of what the railway industry can do when working in partnership with local organisations to improve the railway for the benefit of communities and businesses by delivering a new station for the Beaulieu community.”
Housing association B3Living has secured a £50 million sustainability-linked loan from Lloyds Bank to build hundreds of new, affordable properties. Its sustainability-linked loan facility will be measured against three KPIs, which will see B3Living receive discounted funding relative to its performance as against agreed targets. The first KPI relates to retrofitting existing stock to ensure the housing association is going above and beyond the current minimum regulations to bring all of its properties up to at least EPC C by 2028. T B3Living supports around 12,000 people in 5,000 homes among communities in Broxbourne and the wider south east Hertfordshire area and is currently rated as ‘Silver’ via the SHIFT sustainability framework (which amalgamates 15 separate ESG KPIs into one overarching score). Its aim is to enhance its SHIFT score year-on-year with the ambition of achieving a stretching SHIFT “Gold” status in 2024, and continuing to target a further numerical uplift in following years. Finally, B3Living aims to build at least 50 energy-efficient, affordable new build homes a year by 2028, of which 70% will be in Broxbourne to help tackle the ongoing shortage of affordable housing in the borough. Alex Shelock, B3Living’s executive director for finance, said: “In this current operating environment of high inflation and interest rates coupled with political and economic uncertainty, organisations like ours have a tough balancing act in terms of protecting financial resilience whilst delivering for our customers and communities. “The transition towards net-zero carbon is a key strategic priority for B3Living, and this type of flexible and incentivised loan is an excellent avenue for us to stretch our ESG ambitions and deliver benefits for existing customers as well as those yet to be housed. It also strengthens a nearly decade-long partnership between Lloyds Bank and B3Living.” Building, Design & Construction Magazine | The Choice of Industry Professionals
Morgan Sindall has completed work on a new school in Warwick. Kenilworth School and Sixth Form is part of Warwick District Council’s plans to increase school places and improve facilities in the region. The project involved Kenilworth School & Sixth Form relocating from two existing sites to a new facility at Southcrest Farm, Glasshouse Lane in Kenilworth. Spanning over 36 acres of land, the new three-story campus offers 2,200 places, an increase of 440, helping to cater for the growing population in Kenilworth, a market town six miles southwest of Coventry. Procured through the Pagabo Framework and delivered for Kenilworth Multi Academy Trust (KMAT) and Warwick District Council, the school is now one of the largest in the UK. The design includes extensive teaching and social provision including two floodlit all-weather pitches, natural grass pitches and hard-court areas; a dining room with “grab-and-go” options, hall and theatre, community sports and changing facilities, and a special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) suite. Following completion, the community and local sports clubs will have use of new sports and leisure facilities, and community groups will be able to hire the hall/theatre and other facilities at the school. The local air cadet group, 496 (Kenilworth & Balsall Common) Squadron, have also been invited to share the facilities. Richard Fielding, area director at Morgan Sindall Construction, said: “KMAT already had an existing reputation as one of the best schools in the area, so it was an honour to be a part of developing it even further. The completion of the new school marks exciting progress in the provision of public services for the growing town of Kenilworth. We are delighted to have completed construction works on one of the largest schools to have been built in the UK, and to deliver facilities which will benefit not only students and staff at the school, but the wider community for years to come.” Building, Design & Construction Magazine | The Choice of Industry Professionals
Westminster City Council has given its backing to Squire & Partners-designed proposals for a 10-storey luxury care facility near the River Thames and Smith Square. The practice’s plans for care-home operator Medici Lifecare will see the demolition of 1930s Art Deco block Dean Bradley House, which stands on Horseferry Road, to make way for the development. The eight-storey office building is not nationally listed, but is a local “building of merit” in the Smith Square Conservation Area. Squire’s proposals are a rejig of a 2017 approval for the site for developer Mayfair Charities. That consent was for a new office, retail and residential block, but it was not implemented. Members of Westminster’s Planning Committee on Tuesday granted Squire and Medici Lifecare consent for a “flexible” scheme allowing the new building to be used either as a care home or as a post-operative care facility with clinical and retail elements. The care-home version would include 134 living units along with a library, restaurant, communal lounges and quiet rooms, therapy rooms, an art studio and a hydrotherapy pool. The alternative plan would offer 40 post operative care units, a hydrotherapy pool, 6,152sq m of space for clinical use, and two non-food shop units at ground-floor level. Both versions deliver new structures with a gross internal area of around 10,360sq m – an uplift of more than 3,000sq m on the current building. Squire said its proposals were a low-carbon development that would deliver much-needed healthcare infrastructure in an all-electric building. Partner Murray Levinson said the practice’s design took inspiration from the adjacent grade II-listed Belgravia House building, while its red-brick panels and Portland stone piers reflected styles found in the conservation area. “Our design complements the grandeur of brick and stone buildings in the conservation area, where a tripartite elevation of a central stone bay is flanked by brick wings,” he said. Toby Burgess, Head of Corporate Strategy and Property Development at Medici Lifecare said: “Successfully obtaining planning consent, for one of prime Central London’s few Landmark Healthcare Facilities, continues to demonstrate our ability to overcome the high barriers of entry within our healthcare model.” Building, Design & Construction Magazine | The Choice of Industry Professionals
Developer Endurance Land have received the go-ahead to retrofit and extend a 1990s office near London’s Old Street Junction. The updated 35-storey building on 99 City Road will serve as an innovation hub for tech clients as it provides 700,000 sq ft of workspace. Putting a new spin on the outdated office, designers Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (KPF) plan to transform the existing building, upgrading how the building interacts with its neighbours and enhancing the sustainability of the building. Jonathon Fletcher, a CEO from Endurance Land said: “The redevelopment will deliver a landmark, Net Zero scheme that’s tailored to Islington and Old Street, drastically improve the building’s sustainability credentials, offer generous community benefits, and unlock the potential of the site. It’s an incredible achievement to design a tower of this calibre. We are delighted to have been granted a resolution for planning approval.” Redeveloping the tower building will improve the public realm by providing a generous new public square and widening pedestrian pinch points. Alongside the public benefit, the design puts a strong emphasis on sustainability credentials by targeting some of the highest industry standards for a tower development. Elie Gamburg, a Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates Principal stated: “The design for 99 City Road transforms an unattractive building, and almost triples the public realm at a key London location. Our design’s innovative approach to ‘folding’ as a formal concept responds to the site’s diverse contexts at multiple scales, and elegant structural solutions achieve ambitious embodied carbon targets. A careful emphasis has been placed on detail and material craft to create a building that is sensitively-scaled with an appearance that changes with peoples viewing position.” Building, Design & Construction Magazine | The Choice of Industry Professionals
Developer Regal London have submitted plans for a Purpose-Built Student Accommodation (PBSA) scheme on ‘Wembley Greenaway’, in the London Borough of Brent. The proposed scheme will open up the railway lands parallel to High Road, Wembley for the first time, and will provide safe and inclusive green space. The proposals for Wembley Greenaway comprise 639 student beds across a range of bedroom typologies, including 10% accessible rooms. The development is proposed to be car free, and will include new public realm with greenery, seating and play for use by all and a community studio rentable space. Providing easy access to significant numbers of higher education campuses in London, Wembley Central Underground Station is less than a 10 minute walk from the site, with access to the Overground, Bakerloo and London Northwestern Lines, while the equally close Wembley Stadium Station offers access to the Chiltern Main Line, with regular fast trains to London Marylebone. This is Regal London’s second PBSA development in the borough, and it’s fifth in London following The Society – also on High Road Wembley, Devonshire Place in Southwark (currently in planning) and the proposed new developments on Chalk Farm Road in the London Borough of Camden next to the Roundhouse, and Orchard Wharf opposite the 02 Arena. Subject to successful planning approvals, this takes Regal London’s PBSA portfolio to nearly 3,500 beds across the capital. Paul Eden, co-founder of Regal London commented: “There is clear demand for high quality purpose-built student accommodation in London – well located, with good sustainability credentials and a thoughtful approach to design and wellbeing. We hope to be able to deliver this for High Road, Wembley and to continue working closely with our local neighbours in the area.” Building, Design & Construction Magazine | The Choice of Industry Professionals
Top 10 homebuilder Keepmoat has launched the third in a series of work placement opportunities, aimed at attracting women across the UK into the homebuilding industry. Keepmoat has partnered with Women into Construction (WiC) and the Home Builders Federation (HBF) and eight other home builders to provide candidates with opportunities to learn about the range of roles within the housebuilding sector and understand the experience that is required to start a career in the industry. Keepmoat has also supported the first Women into Construction Employment programme in the North East and since March, has successfully recruited two candidates in the North East and South Midlands regions. Kaycie Hall, an apprentice bricklayer in the North East, took part in the first work placement earlier in the year via the programme in the North East. Kaycie gained employment with Keepmoat in June as an Apprentice Bricklayer, and won the ‘Rising Star 2023 – North’ category at the WiC awards. Liliana Virlan and Hannah Nickolds joined Keepmoat on placement as part of WiC’s Women into Home Building programme in June. Established in partnership with the HBF and nine major homebuilders, the programme offers on-site work placements and insights into career opportunities within the homebuilding industry. Hannah completed her placement at Keepmoat’s Strawberry Fields development in Bridlington and Liliana undertook her placement at Glenvale Park, Wellingborough. Another success story is Evelyn Hopkins, who successfully completed her NHBC Level Four Site Supervision apprentice NHBC course in March 2023 and was one of a few candidates on the programme to achieve a Distinction level. As part of her course, Evelyn has supported the WiC programmes as a role model and mentor, demonstrating how women can succeed in construction roles. Keepmoat’s third work placement cohort, in partnership with WiC and HBF, launched at the beginning of September across its East and West Midlands regions. Charlotte Goode, Divisional Chair for Keepmoat West Midlands and East Midlands, said: “Investing in the next generation of talent and driving diversity within the homebuilding and construction industry is crucial. Partnering with organisations such as WiC and HBF enables us to maximise the opportunities that we can provide to local people when it comes to securing experience and careers within our industry. We are delighted to be working with them once again. The feedback so far has been extremely positive, and we are looking forward to continuing to make a positive difference to people’s lives.” Jacqui Wordsworth, Business Development Director at WiC added: “The Women into Home Building programme is a fantastic example of collaboration to create a pipeline of new female talent for the sector. Working together we can promote the opportunities on offer and attract a diverse range of women with amazing skills into Home Building.” Building, Design & Construction Magazine | The Choice of Industry Professionals
Zentia, a pioneering leader in ceiling systems, is thrilled to announce the highly anticipated launch of three new creative additions to Sonify. This innovative release introduces an array of cutting-edge features that redefine the possibilities of acoustic design, enhancing both aesthetics and functionality. Launched on 6th September, these three new additions to the Sonify range enables architects, designers, and space planners to craft truly immersive environments that prioritise both form and function. The update includes the introduction of Sonify Tilt, a solution for creating motion in design using angled panels, redefining precision alignment without the need for cable adjustments. The incorporation of 3D free-flowing materials opens up new avenues for captivating raft solutions, making spaces more engaging and visually stimulating. Installation is seamless and swift, and the innovative angles not only serve as design elements but also enhance sound absorption by disrupting sound waves and curbing reverberation within the environment. Another addition is the introduction of Sonify Highway, which introduces an innovative design approach by allowing wider gaps between panels, emphasising the support grid as a prominent visual element. The dual layer grid, available in an array of 35 colours, contrasts aesthetically with panel and soffit shades, injecting a personalised flair. Sonify Highway not only showcases the grid but also facilitates easier access to areas requiring constant entry without the need for panel adjustments, allowing designs to evolve and reflect the dynamic nature of modern spaces. Sonify Wall Absorbers are also now available, offering pioneering solutions in acoustic design. Sonify Wall Absorbers can effortlessly adhere to walls offering rapid and efficient installation. Architects and designers can leverage the panels as visual elements, combining multiple units to create patterns and infuse colour into the rest of the room. By achieving a vertical dimension of sound absorption, the wall absorbers deliver both acoustic and visual excellence. John Spicer, Head of New Product Development at Zentia, expressed the company’s enthusiasm about these exciting new features: “With these latest additions to our Sonify suite, we empower architects and designers to go above and beyond traditional acoustic solutions, and foster boundless creativity. Each component may seem small, but as a collective, they amplify design choices, offering a new dimension of individuality.” Building, Design & Construction Magazine | The Choice of Industry Professionals
