Santander

TODD Architects Completes Santander Offices

TODD Architects has successfully completed the interior planning and configuration of CNP Santander Insurance’s newly constructed offices at Three Park Place, Hatch Street Upper, Dublin 2. After an in-depth staff consultation process, TODD Architects created a concept which considered and delivered a consciously ergonomic, contemporary workplace which meets the current

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Latest Issue
Issue 325 : Feb 2025

Santander

Smart Spaces wins Santander Technology Business of the Year at the Growing Business Awards 2023

Smart Spaces wins Santander Technology Business of the Year at the Growing Business Awards 2023

Smart Spaces announces today that it has won the Santander Technology Business of the Year at the Growing Business Awards 2023 – an annual event which honours the UK’s most outstanding entrepreneurs and high growth SME businesses. Smart Spaces won because the judges were impressed by how much it had grown in such a short period of time. Its smart building operating system (OS) is leading the market helping to support customers meet their ESG goals and has subsequently established the UK as a world leader in smart building delivery. Now in its 26th year, the Growing Business Awards took place at an exclusive gala and dinner ceremony on Wednesday 29 November at the Marriott Hotel Grosvenor Square in London. Dan Drogman, Smart Spaces’ chief executive officer, says, “Our ambition is to be the world’s leading smart building operating system for commercial real estate.  We’re rapidly realising this goal as evidenced by our recent business performance and the future pipeline of projects we’re working on. Winning the Santander Technology Business of the Year at the Growing Business Awards makes us extremely proud given it’s a respected external third party highlighting and endorsing what we’ve achieved.” Key success highlights Building, Design & Construction Magazine | The Choice of Industry Professionals

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Green light for £100m SimpsonHaugh designed 32-storey residential tower in Leeds city centre

Leeds City Council’s Plans Panel has unanimously resolved to grant detailed planning permission for the redevelopment of 44 Merrion Street, located in the heart of the city’s Cultural District. The £100m scheme will provide accommodation for 660 students in a world-class tall building that rises to 32 storeys. The SimpsonHaugh designed project will replace a large 1970s office block that was previously home to Spanish banking giant Santander. The mixed-use building, which rises to 99.8metres, will have active uses at street level and deliver significant public realm enhancements. The internal space has been conceived to help provide for the city’s pressing need for state-of-the-art purpose-designed student accommodation, with 573 undergraduate club rooms and studio apartments, together with 87 postgraduate studio apartments. The development company – Merrion Street Leeds Ltd – is owned by Real Estate Capital Holdings in partnership with Bloombridge LLP. Real Estate Capital Holdings is also a major shareholder in affordable housing specialist Living Space Housing, strategic land company Terra Strategic, and Hayfield – the UK’s Best Small Housebuilder (WhatHouse? and Housebuilder Awards). Richard Cutler, Director of Merrion Street Leeds Ltd said: “We are delighted to receive detailed planning permission for this landmark scheme. It has taken 18 months of hard work from the whole team to get to this stage and we are very grateful to our stakeholders and Leeds City Council for the support shown. “The redevelopment of 44 Merrion Street will bring a world-class tall building to the city, help to meet the need for student accommodation from the 60,000 students in the Universities and Colleges of Leeds, and generate much needed construction jobs and permanent jobs in the process.” Ian Simpson, Founding Partner of SimpsonHaugh said: “Tall buildings are markers for ambition, pride and confidence. They tell a story about a city and its direction of travel and in turn attract people to both visit and put down roots. It is very pleasing to be awarded planning for a 32-storey tower in the current market where investment injections are needed to stimulate the economy. Once built, this evocative, sculptural crystalline form will become home to 660 students, many of whom will hopefully choose to permanently reside in the city region following their graduation.” The reflective appearance of the tower has led it to being described as a crystalline structure, having taken precedent in its form and materiality from quartz crystals. The design and engineering for the scheme has sustainability at its heart and renewable energy solutions and high thermal efficiency measures have been central to the project brief from the outset. Richard Cutler, Partner of Bloombridge LLP added: “Everything about this project signifies a strong response to the uncertainties created by Covid-19. As well as providing a design-led home for students, this development will raise the bar for architecture in Leeds’ Cultural District. It will provide new street level retail, arts and cultural space, as well as delivering public realm enhancements – including new trees – within the vicinity of important historic assets such as the Grade I Listed St John’s Church.” Features of the building include a ground floor arcade-style circulation space and a postgraduate rooftop amenity space. The tower is predominantly composed of cluster apartments – accounting for approximately 73 per cent of the total mix of accommodation. Each cluster has five bedrooms (all with an en-suite bathroom), a separate kitchen and dining space, and a larger communal living area which will be shared with the adjacent cluster. The studio apartments provide a self-contained alternative to cluster living, but the residents will still be able to make use of a wealth of communal facilities on site, whilst being within walking distance of just about everything the resurgent city of Leeds has to offer. Five per cent of the total student bed spaces are allocated as wheelchair accessible. In addition to SimpsonHaugh & Partners, the world class project team includes Savills, WSP, Re-Form and Paragon.

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TODD Architects Completes Santander Offices

TODD Architects has successfully completed the interior planning and configuration of CNP Santander Insurance’s newly constructed offices at Three Park Place, Hatch Street Upper, Dublin 2. After an in-depth staff consultation process, TODD Architects created a concept which considered and delivered a consciously ergonomic, contemporary workplace which meets the current needs of the staff, while also allowing for future expansion with the addition of a purpose-built sublet area. “This new space presented a fantastic opportunity to highlight structural in-situ features, such as the pristine cast concrete shell, which forms a strong component of the overall design. Given the large floor plate, the main conceptual objective was to ensure that the office felt unified with a single democratic design in mind, whilst providing a range of spaces adaptable for various activities,” said Nilfa Burke, Project Designer at TODD Architects. Meeting rooms are located to the periphery of the plan with workstations positioned centrally, promoting multidisciplinary interaction between teams, while informal breakout and meeting spaces, including glazed pods, are interspersed for formal and informal meetings and interactions. The plan for the second floor fit-out uses the overhead finishes and varying ceiling heights to define space, while maintaining a unified free flowing open-plan office layout. Acoustic considerations are addressed using suspended acoustic ceiling panels clad in perforated oak veneer acoustic timber panelling. These also create a clean, aesthetic finish in concealing the large overhead ventilation ducts as well as providing a mount for other ceiling services such as the fire detectors, voice evacuation speakers and sprinkler heads. The material palette and specified furniture were key components in the workspace design. All task chairs were pre-tested by employees to find the right fit for each specific need, with all workstations also offering the flexibility of electronic sit-stand. The kitchenette and canteen offer employees essential facilities and an open plan social dining space which can also be used for formal and informal meetings. It is currently facilitating townhall forums. “Feedback provided throughout the various stages, helped direct us and overcome challenges which contributed to a more tailored design. The client embraced our ideas, which positively impacted on the delivery. We are incredibly proud of the resulting bespoke and progressive fit out, it is a true reflection of the success of our consultation process,” Nilfa added. Completed in June 2018, the scheme has already received an overwhelmingly positive response and was shortlisted in 2018 Fit Out Awards.

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Harwell Science and Innovation Campus Revealed the About the Refurbishments

Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire has revealed that they will be working to refurbish the legacy RAF buildings on the site with the intention of creating new facilities. This refurbishment has been planned following the £7.4 million funding that has been granted by Santander Corporate & Commercial. It is thought that this project will see a number of new businesses relocating to the new facility as well as the possible extension of those already at the site and the creation. This refurbishment project could also see the creation of thousands of new jobs. In the 1940s the site at Harwell was a World War 2 RAF air base. Nowadays it is dedicated to science and technology and offers a mixture of world class facilities, supercomputer resources and open source national laboratories. The research and testing that takes place on the campus covers five sectors off work. These sectors include space and satellite applications, life sciences and healthtec, big data and supercomputing, energy and the environment, and advanced engineering and materials. It is thought that more than 5,000 people work at the campus stretched across over 200 organisations. There will be a focus on the physical expansion of the compass over the course of the next few years and it is thought that around one million square feet of new buildings have been planned and will be constructed over the next five years. These planned developments will include a variety of buildings for industrial, office and laboratory purposes. Santander Corporate & Commercial has worked with the campus in order to offer a number of different funding options over the years that has allowed Harwell to build more facilities including office space and laboratories. This latest funding package focuses on refurbishing the dated RAF buildings on the campus in order to create a new headquarters as well as more office space that will be let out.

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£210m Investment to Help Durham Energy Firm Create 3 Onshore Wind Farms and 250 Jobs

Durham-headquartered Banks Renewables has secured a £210m investment package to support the construction of its next three onshore wind farm projects. The company, which is the renewable energy division of North East property and energy business The Banks Group, will build wind farms at Moor House near Darlington in County Durham and at the Middle Muir and Kype Muir schemes in South Lanarkshire, Scotland. Around 250 jobs will be created during construction which, when complete, will see Banks Renewables’ generation capacity from onshore wind rise from 74MW today to 224MW. The business has worked with lenders Macquarie Infrastructure Debt Investment Solutions (MIDIS), Santander, ING, National Australia Bank and Rabobank to secure the funding. The three wind farms were all successful in the UK government’s first competitive Contracts for Difference (CfD) programme for onshore and offshore projects in 2015, since when Banks Renewables has been working towards putting the commercial structures in place to take them forward. Manufacturer Senvion has been contracted to supply and install the turbines for all three projects, with Kype Muir, Middle Muir and Moor House each comprising 26, 15 and six turbines respectively. Richard Dunkley, managing director at Banks Renewables, said: “This investment package is a real expression of confidence in both Banks Renewables and the wider UK onshore wind sector, and it’s exciting to now be accelerating the process of taking these three wind farms forward. “The Kype Muir, Middle Muir and Moor House wind farms have all taken many years of challenging development to get to this stage, and being successful in the government’s first ever CfD auction against stiff competition was critical to the projects’ success. “Onshore wind in general and these projects in particular represent the best value for money to consumers as the government seeks to deliver on its climate change obligations. We believe onshore wind will continue to play a key role in delivering lowest cost carbon free energy for the UK.“ Read more at https://bdaily.co.uk/environment/02-03-2017/210m-investment-to-help-durham-energy-firm-create-3-onshore-wind-farms-and-250-jobs/

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