This retrofit project redeveloped a quartet of dilapidated listed 19th Century industrial buildings within Bath’s World Heritage Site into a new creative hub with 40,000 ft2 of workspace.
Newark Works in Bath is a series of Victorian buildings alongside the river Avon just a 5-minute walk from Bath Spa train station and the centre of Bath. The project retrofits four interlinked industrial buildings, originally home to heavy engineering firm Stothert & Pitt, internationally recognised ‘crane makers to the world’. The buildings date from 1857 to 1905 and have an important legacy as part of the industrial development of Bath and the Great Western Railway.
Working closely with the B&NES planning and Conservation teams, the scheme strikes a balance; successfully ensuring the historic significance is respected and enhanced with exciting useable work and leisure spaces rather than purely trying to preserve the site as a ‘museum piece’.
The buildings are typical of the Victorian industrial era, with a simple building form (width circa 16m), with thick masonry external walls, early steel and timber roof trusses, large full-height volumes that are daylit by generously sized, cast iron windows.
The retrofit strategy was to create a new shared entrance into a central ‘hub’ space and introduces a full-height atria to display the existing crane machinery at roof level above with walkways circulating around it. New lightweight mezzanine floors were inserted into double-height machine halls at a level co-ordinated across the four buildings.
The developer, TCN is experienced in working with former industrial buildings and recognises the importance of preserving the inherent character the industrial fabric provides by regenerating with a ‘light touch’. This low carbon approach creates places which have a strong sense of identity which has, in their experience, helped to ensure the building has a continuing sustainable future.
In developing the thermal strategy, the orientation of the buildings with its long elevations primarily facing North – South, taking advantage of daylighting and solar gain through the large windows was an obvious step but intervention was needed to also address the heat loss of the large single glazed windows.
We took the difficult decision to replace the existing industrial windows with a higher-performing double-glazed – yet sympathetic – units as the benefits on reduced heat loss and airtightness outweighed the heritage interest in restoring the very fragile and leaky originals. This also ensured opening vents in each window were included for the comfort of the future occupants. Two of the large cast-iron windows were retained and refurbished in-situ in non-critical areas to preserve the sense of the past.
Although a fabric first approach has been adopted on this project, the retention of exposed internal masonry walls was an important visual characteristic of the industrial past to be preserved, and part of the client brief. It was not possible therefore to introduce either internal or external insulation. The buildings have been re-roofed with clay tile, slate, and zinc with some minor strengthening to support an enhanced thermal insulation build-up so the historic roofs could perform to modern standards. The thick masonry external walls also provide thermal mass to help even-out high temperature spikes in the summer months.
The modifications proposed were mainly within the internal volumes creating new mezzanine floors and new doorways and openings to connect the buildings. The internal subdivision provides flexible workspace, from co-working spaces to individual offices. Rentable units have been sub-divided working with the inherent structural modules of the building and exploiting the building’s volume allowing many units to have cross-ventilation and rooflights. Low energy servicing has been adopted to support the environmental strategy for the building.
To promote a strong sense of community, breakout areas including a communal kitchen and events space plus an independent coffee shop have all been included.
