34 PROJECT REPORT: HERITAGE & CONSERVATION
opportunities of cycling and walking down the waterside.
“Especially in a time of lockdown, exercise is vital for mental health,” says Cooper, “and there’s no better incentive to get outdoors than having the perfect spot for it just outside your front door.”
A greener build
In terms of low energy technologies, the architect admits the project may not be a “model of environmentalism,” however multiple elements helped achieve a greener result.
Green roofs were one such addition – the lead architect reports these were welcomed by planners. Further aiding biodiversity, bat and swift boxes were included following stringent ecology surveys.
“It was quite a headache, trying to deal with one system which needs to be made with precision in a factory, and then trying to insert it into something which has been hand built in the Victorian era.” The architect tells me it took “a huge amount” of setting out, modelling and resurveying to achieve this connection.
Live, work and play
Having achieved this complex hybrid structure, Cooper says that the client wanted to do “something different” when it came to the scheme’s end use, and intended to “set the benchmark for regeneration” in so doing. “It’s not the standard conversion of a building, where they just thought about how many flats they could get in and how cheaply they could do it,” he explains. “It’s a placemaking project, and we’ve really paid attention to how we could create a community here.” As such, the architects followed a “live, work and play” ethos when designing the placemaking aspect of the development. Embodying this idea, there is a gym, a communal work at home office space where people can mix and “not feel isolated working in their own apartment,” and a communal garden space. This includes table tennis tables and street furniture – intended to “encourage people to form a community.”
Being alongside a canal, the development also naturally offers the leisure
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The project also features solar PVs, but Cooper believes that the real sustainability at The Mill is found in how it reuses a substantial existing building: “we’re not losing all that embodied carbon that went into its construction.” He summarises, “We believe that the reuse and adapt method is far better than building something new with flash technology added.” With brick production having significant amounts of embodied carbon, “it would have been a crying shame to have knocked it down and started again,” he says.
Problem solvers
The first phase now complete, the team has started work on the further two phases, phase two starting in August this year and due for completion in Spring 2022, and phase three expected to begin in the middle of 2021.
Cooper looks back to the “numerous” challenges within the first phase, but says that, “as an architect, that’s basically your day job; coming up with solutions to problems is just what we do.” Despite this, he still cites the matching up of the new frame with the restored building as “a huge task,” one that couldn’t have been achieved without high levels of collaboration between the project’s stakeholders. The planners were “delighted” with the end result, he says, as were the developers, having managed to sell all units within the development off plan.
In what is a hearteningly positive coda to a challenging project, its architect says “we’ve only heard positive feedback so far – people are so proud to have been involved, especially ourselves.”
ADF JANUARY 2021
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