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The interior courtyard
© Morley von Sternberg “The building provides the kind of soul you can’t buy with a
new one,” he says. Meanwhile, the team planned the nine-story building next
door. It had to make its own statement in order to stake its place on the frantic Euston Road. Fronted with an abstracted portico of 12-tonne cement columns, suggested by the columns of St Pancras Church over the road, the building of white concrete rises majestically about the thoroughfare. To retain a sense of order between the old and new structures, string course heights were taken from the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Building, resulting in some very generous floor-to-ceiling heights – 3.2 m on the ‘yellow’ floor. And yet, as soon as some more senior members of staff found
out about the split between old and new, they began to lobby the architects for rooms in the conversion. “People started laying claim to it,” says Poots. “We really had
to wrestle with them and tell them this wasn’t part of the new culture. We really didn’t want people to be locked away.” Instead, the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Building is home to a variety of shared meeting rooms and libraries reachable by
walkways. But it’s not just the Victorian wing that is non-propri- etary. Squire designed a separate circulation around the commit- tee room on the top floor. “The idea is that it is not an HQ, but a national centre used by
the regional UNISON areas,” he says. The complex comprises an internal staircase leading to a sort of ‘green room’, where regional secretaries and other representatives can chat, make calls and check their emails. On NEC days, an adjoining reception desk can be staffed. A resource library sits next door. But the committee room is not just for red letter days. The end sections of the semi-circular auditorium seating can be detached to form an oval conference table for more general use. The other main shared area, the space between the two build-
ings, leads off the main reception and atrium area. Its ‘common’ nature leads Poots to call it a ‘village green’ or, less Hardy-like, a ‘touchdown space’. Informed by previous encounters with glass atria, Poots and
team were careful to introduce solid elements. Among individu- ally specified panes of glass, sit silver panels. These bounce some of the light back into the sky, preventing the shared area becom-
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