Creative re-use at Lakeshore development, Bristol, UK

Buro Happold

01/06/2012 Written by: Claire Smith No comments

The Buro Happold project “Lakeshore” is currently featuring as part of the Bristol retrofit city exhibition at the re-launch of the Bristol Architecture Centre.  The exhibition is celebrating Bristol’s legacy of creative re-use of buildings and places and presents a range of retrofit interventions and innovative visions for the future of Bristol.  Multidisciplinary engineering consultancy Buro Happold provided structural, geotechnical and civil engineering services for the Lakeshore redevelopment  in South Bristol which sees the creative re-use of the Will Tobacco Headquarters, which had been empty for many years, to contemporary lakeside flats with developer Urban Splash. The development has transformed the iconic building and landscape designed by SOM, in the 1970s, into apartments which are now welcoming their first occupants.  

Buro Happold structural team undertook a careful study of the existing structure to prove that the building had the capacity to withstand the interventions proposed by the Bristol based architect’s Fergusson Mann which included cutting an atrium down the centre of the building to bring light into its heart creating an uplifting and memorable space.  A new build car park, concealed by its construction into the contours of the site, also challenged the team and was successfully executed by Hydrock with the use of  a ground anchor system.  Hidden beneath the footprint of this car park are geothermal boreholes which have helped the building achieve an “excellent” eco homes rating.  For me the most special feature of the development, and hence its name, is the lake which surrounds the building and was remediated with the help of the Buro Happold geo-environmental team using a bioremediation technique.

Lakeshore is another brave move by Urban Splash and proves them to be as stated in The Independent “ A developer with a social conscience regenerating industrial buildings and derelict sites into chic homes.”