14 INSIGHTS SITE LINES Adaptive reuse, realised
Ben Heath, principal at Grimshaw, looks at how the practice returned to the Herman Miller factory in Bath to realise its original design intent of adaptive reuse, and harness the building’s flexibility to create a new school of art and design
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n responding to the significant pressures of climate change on the planet, and the rightly elevated scrutiny the built environment is under in terms of its impact, it is imperative that designers do more with less. Our buildings should perform better, with reduced carbon consumption, and lower financial costs.
The large quantities of embodied carbon within existing buildings cannot be ignored, and simply demolishing them to deliver new, more sustainable structures is rarely a cost-effective solution. The ability for buildings to flex and adapt to change has been at the heart of Grimshaw’s thinking, from the practice’s earliest work onwards. To borrow Sir Alex Gordon’s famous phrase: “long life, loose fit, low energy” – a phrase as relevant today as when he first proposed it – the longer buildings’ useful life, the more sustainable they are. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the Herman Miller Factory in Bath, completed in 1976 and conceived by its designers Terry Farrell and Nicholas Grimshaw as an “indeterminate building,” able to continually change and evolve in response to its current and future users’ needs. As the ultimate proof of concept, over 40 years later Grimshaw has built upon the building’s original ethos and innovative approach to adaptive reuse, repurposing it into the new School of Art and Design for Bath Spa University. When contemplating retrofit projects, it is important to consider
location, even before assessing the value of the structures themselves. Existing buildings may be close to established amenities and transport networks – often unlike peripheral development opportunities on vacant sites – promoting low carbon modes of travel, as well as wider wellbeing benefits. This was certainly the case at the former Herman Miller factory, where several bus and key cycle routes connect the site to the centre of Bath, the city’s two main railway stations, and the university’s student housing. For the new inhabitants, this dramatically reduces the reliance on car travel compared to the previous campus, with walking and cycling now the most convenient means of access for many. The existing facade’s modular system of interchangeable solid and glass panels allowed the elevation to be easily ‘retuned’ as activities within changed – as it had been several times during the furniture manufacturer’s occupation. Beyond flexibility, the system also anticipated the potential need to adapt to future technologies,
As the ultimate proof of concept, over 40 years later Grimshaw has built upon the building’s original ethos
© Paul Raftery INDETERMINATE The Herman Miller Factory was conceived by its designers Terry Farrell and Nicholas Grimshaw as an “indeterminate building,” able to continually evolve
© Paul Raftery
WWW.ARCHITECTSDATAFILE.CO.UK
ADF APRIL/MAY 2020
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