Urban

Oliver's Yard

Urban Heritage

Features

Covent Garden Apartment
Domus

Cultural

The Making Of: The ArtPlay Pavilion

Research and Innovation

Residential

Historic

Covent Garden Apartment

Writing

Precise Approximations
Jerome Wren

ArtPlay Pavilion at Dulwich Picture Gallery 

Experiencing Culture

Hill House Box

Permanence is a Privilege
Andy Groarke, Kevin Carmody

Carmody Groarke 
A+U 264

Workplace

British Library, Boston Spa 

Power Hall, Science and Industry Museum Manchester

Adaptive Reuse
Lukas Barry 

Milan Giovenale 

Bibliothèque nationale de France Conservation Centre 

Talks and Teaching

Truman Brewery
Grow Places Podcast 

Scaffold, Episode 78
Architecture Foundation

Design Museum Gent 

Taking Care of Matters
The Berlage, TU Delft 

London Wall Buildings

LSE Bankside House

469 Bethnal Green Road

Special Exhibitions Gallery, Science and Industry Museum Manchester

Wandsworth Gasworks

Windermere Jetty Museum

Cabot Square

Decarbonising Spaces for Art
World Art Foundation Conference

Repurposing and transforming existing buildings

'Not Forever'
Yale School of Architecture 

BFI Southbank 

 7 July Memorial 

Two Pavilions 

University of Leeds Archive Building 

Playhouse Theatre 

Hill House: Not Forever 

Learning from Canary Wharf 
Peter Lee

Grossmarkt Theatre Pavilion

Studio East Dining 

Carmody Groarke A+ Bozar
Architecture in Belgium

The Filling Station 

Gormley Studio 

Research into Circular Building Materials with Imperial College 

Nea Paphos Mosaic Shelter 

Historic Sites and Contemporary Access
Design Museum London



Dock 10 

Aeschenplatz 6

Teatro Oficina
Harvard GSD

Gent Waste Brick 

Highgate House 

Carmody Groarke 
AMAG 23

Carmody Groarke Contacts Book
RIBA Journal 

Glass reinforced plastic: architectural uses for an industrial material
MIT Material Science Conference 

Fitzrovia House 

Maggie's Merseyside 

V&A Members Room 

Meaning through Making 
Edwin Heathcote 

Double Club 

Artist Studio, Hoxton 

Windermere Jetty Museum 
The Guardian 

Public Art and the Built Environment
Lisson Gallery

Reflections on Teaching
Andy Groarke 

7 July Memorial Tavistock Square 

Room, City, Building 
Kevin Carmody 

White Cube at Glyndebourne

Underground Spa 

Windermere Jetty Museum
Architectural Review 

Rectory Farm 

House and Studio Lambeth 
Wallpaper*

Surreal House 
The Barbican 

Steindamm Ensemble 

'An Incomplete Performance'
Harvard GSD

Carmody Groarke 
El Croquis 195

Bauhaus Art as Life 
The Barbican 

Milan Giovenale
Casabella 946

Frieze Art Fair 

Grossmarkt Theatre Pavilion
Architecture Foundation

Gent Waste Brick 
Architects' Journal 

Design Museum Gent: a Story of Necessity and Ambition
Pieter T'Jonck

Milan Giovenale
Architects' Journal 

Dulwich Picture Gallery 
In View 

Skywalk 

Blind Light 

A Sense of Time
José Manuel Pedreirinho

Saving the Hill House 
National Trust for Scotland 

Postmodernism Style and Subversion 
V&A

Rennie Mackintosh’s Hill House 
The Observer 

Retain, Reuse, Reinvent
Cambridge University 

Scaffolding for Dinner
Abitare 

Norfolk House 

In Conversation with David Chipperfield
El Croquis

Designs of the Year
Design Museum London 

Basquiat Boom for Real 
The Barbican 

Abstract Expressionism
Royal Academy of Arts

Architecture Foundation 

Arquitectura Viva
Carmody Groarke 

Windermere Jetty Museum
RIBA Building Stories

7 July 2005 Memorial 
Antony Gormley

Artists and Architects
Antony Gormley

Special Exhibitions Gallery
Wallpaper*

Chair 182
Dezeen


Seating Plan
Glenn Adamson

Evangelical Campus Nuremberg 

Work 

The ArtPlay Pavilion reflects a rigorous commitment to sustainable construction. Its lightweight, low carbon frame is constructed entirely of UK-grown timber, processed in our partnering Sawmill in Wiltshire. The exposed reciprocal grid roof — crafted from Douglas Fir beams — is both structurally efficient and visually expressive.

The Pavilion's design prioritises natural ventilation, passive solar strategies, and low-tech, dry construction methods to minimise both operational and embodied carbon. All timber is fully traceable, with provenance tracked from forest to fabrication, ensuring environmental integrity across the supply chain.

With a new garden as the building’s centrepiece, the project transforms a post-war workplace into a contemporary office that responds to modern patterns of work and embraces low-carbon principles of reuse and retention.

Located close to Old Street, the building originally reflected the corporate ambitions of its time. Sixty years on, it has been reimagined to create a more convivial, tactile, and welcoming setting, quietly repositioning it within East London’s evolving urban landscape. The transformation combines architectural, landscape, and environmental interventions that balance tradition with innovation, working with the existing fabric to extend the building’s life while reducing its carbon footprint in use.

At the heart of the project is a new garden, designed in collaboration with Tom Stuart-Smith Studio. Transforming the original plaza, this new, vibrant central space provides a generous welcome for occupants and visitors. Accessed through the existing undercroft, the garden provides a calm counterpoint to the intensity of Old Street. Informal planting and a scattered canopy of birch trees instil this new social space with a lightly shaded woodland character. The garden acts as a focus of surrounding retail and workspaces, as well as the new building reception. Large sliding doors create a direct link between the reception and the green central space, allowing for an experience that feels more open, social, and connected.

The retrofit embodies a philosophy of retention and repair, introducing carefully targeted upgrades to the existing building to secure its future. The existing structure and majority of the original finishes have been retained, significantly reducing embodied carbon while extending the building’s lifespan. New, all-electric services enable long-term decarbonisation, while maintenance and enhancement works address structural issues that had accumulated over decades of use. This measured approach reduces waste, lowers impact, and ensures the building’s resilience for generations to come.

A series of discreet architectural interventions achieve maximum impact through the smallest means, creating a workplace environment that is convivial and welcoming. New amenities include end-of-trip cycle storage and high-quality changing rooms in the basement, along with enhanced on-floor facilities. These upgrades improve wellbeing and encourage sustainable modes of travel, while strengthening the building’s social character.

The project works sensitively to understand and scrape back layers of past refurbishments to reveal more of the building’s original mid-century fabric. New interventions reinterpret, relate and amplify this character through a contemporary lens, introducing tactility, lightness, and generosity. By doing the most with the least, the retrofit not only improves environmental performance but also redefines the building as a sustainable and welcoming workplace at the heart of East London’s creative economy.

New Business and Communications Manager

The Science and Industry Museum in Manchester is housed within some of the most historically significant buildings and structures from the modern industrial era. As part of a site-wide development plan, the museum's existing buildings are being sensitively restored to repair their historic fabric, while orientation and access between buildings, which are separated by a network of Victorian railway viaducts, is being enhanced and galleries are being transformed.

The new gallery is situated in the west end of the Grade II heritage listed New Warehouse, built in 1882 by the Great Western Railway company. The Special Exhibitions Gallery creates a new visitor route, which improves access to the New Warehouse building, linking the Lower Yard with the busiest levels of the museum above.

A generous ramped entrance at Lower Yard rehabilitates the vaulted under-croft of one of the railway viaducts, which for several years has been a dark and uninviting space for visitors. Full height fibreglass panelled walls transform the visitor welcome from outside to inside, alleviating the visual weight of the brick structures above. Each new fibreglass panel has been hand-cast and tinted with a terracotta hue to complement the surrounding weathered Victorian brickwork.

The panels are subtly back-lit, revealing the maker’s marks in their surface and gently illuminating the spatial and decorative qualities of the historic cast-iron and brick jack-arch structures.

The front-of-house area has been transformed into a bright and welcoming open plan space that provides a point of orientation for visitors. At the same time this aids the museum in resolving a series of functional requirements of circulation, accessibility, staffing and environmental control.

New interventions within the Power Hall are transformative yet discreet, so that the heritage of architecture and collections are foregrounded. Entirely new visitor circulation improves accessibility and legibility; improvements to the existing building fabric optimise energy efficiency; and new interventions into the historic facades open up new views between the city outside and the collection inside.

The project establishes a clear and accessible new route across the site from the New Warehouse, through the newly landscaped Upper Yard, and into the Power Hall. Visitors now arrive through a new central entrance that aligns this journey along the east–west axis of the original goods shed. From this point, they can look west towards the railway rolling stock and east towards the steam engines, immediately revealing the working logic of the building.

Once a shipping shed for the world’s first inter-city steam-powered passenger railway, the Power Hall now houses the UK’s largest working collection of steam, gas, and electric engines. Carmody Groarke’s project returns the Museum’s biggest single-space gallery to its original clarity, reinstating a 108-metre-long hall spanned by distinctive timber roof trusses that divide the space into two parallel bays. This creates an intuitive and inspiring environment for visitors to engage with industrial heritage.

Updated lighting, circulation, heating and control systems place sustainability at the forefront of this transformation, preserving the hall’s historic character while significantly reducing its environmental impact.

The project restores key architectural features to their original form, reinterpreting them for accessibility and clarity. Re-laid cobbles and timber floor finishes are easy to navigate and echo the building’s industrial history, and the original timber roof structure has been faithfully restored. New structural interventions – kept deliberately minimal – sensitively integrate significant repairs into the historic fabric of the building, and a high-quality, consistent material palette creates coherence between old and new.

The reconfiguration of the hall was instrumental in enacting a reorganisation of the collections and exhibition experience. A new entrance has been placed at the centre of the building, designed to enhance visibility and draw in visitors from the newly landscaped Upper Yard and the New Warehouse.

Inside the hall, the layout of the exhibition space has been reimagined. At its centre is the reinstated raised central platform, which historically allowed goods to be loaded and unloaded between trains and carriages. Reintroducing this platform restores the shed’s original working diagram and provides a powerful organisational anchor for the visitor experience. Flanked by railway rolling stock to the west and steam engines to the east, the platform creates a clear central spine for movement and interpretation.

Threaded around this platform, gently ramped walkways unlock the possibility of experiencing the museum’s collections at different levels, and are key to appreciating how the original working building operated—with trains entering at the west and carriages taking goods into the city of Manchester to the east.

New rooflights above the entrance ensure a seamless transition into the exhibition space, bringing in light while minimising solar gains and UV exposure. These units extend the spine of rooflights that illuminate the central platform, casting it in daylight and emphasising its architectural significance.

Nuanced repairs and forward-looking infrastructure upgrades create a transformative visitor experience that unlocks access to the full scope of Power Hall’s unique architectural heritage, and produces an optimised environment for collection care.

Environmental upgrades are all invisible – from the new (fully insulated) roof to the site-wide water source heat pump, to transitioning the steam engines off coal power to green-sourced electric.

Carried out in partnership with Max Fordham, the new carbon-minimising measures are part of a wider decarbonisation scheme expected to save approximately 515 tonnes of CO₂ emissions annually, bringing the museum into alignment with the Manchester’s 2038 net-zero carbon target. The new, low carbon heating is concealed under the adapted central platform, and the open-loop heat pump and electric steam boiler provide a highly efficient, sustainable energy source to run the historic engines.

Inside and out, historic brickwork walls and decorative stone dressings have been restored. New interventions into the historic facades open views between the city outside, and the collection inside. The vast existing window openings receive new large-format glazing to improve daylight and views, flanked by smoky grey oiled Douglas fir natural ventilation panels that recall historic timber sliding doors. The new roof construction features natural wood fibre insulation above the rafters, making it vapour permeable and compatible with its historic ‘breathable’ condition.

The Power Hall is the second project Carmody Groarke have delivered for the Science and Industry Museum as part of its multi-million-pound regeneration project, following the success of the award-winning Special Exhibitions Gallery completed in 2021. The transformation of the museum site seeks to situate it within a wider cultural narrative. It builds upon Manchester’s broader cultural regeneration and makes connections to other cultural institutions, notably via direct access to OMA’s multi-use cultural space Aviva Studios, which opened its doors in 2023.

Precision in architecture is an uncertain concept—there is always a degree of approximation required. Approximation bridges gaps, both literal and metaphorical. Approximation bends and breaks to cater to circumstance. Used carefully, it can recognise the potential for chaos and wilfully integrate this within an ideal whole (perhaps the closest thing possible to precision). Used artfully, it can generate fresh meaning and reveal unexpected opportunities.

To be approximate is to be tolerant. Bethnal Green Road is a tolerant site, born from messy circumstances in a part of East London that was heavily bombed during the Second World War. The resultant context is pluralistic and ad hoc. It can tolerate architecture of various scales, forms and materials.

469 Bethnal Green Road is a utilitarian building, both in conception and construction. Originally designed as a warehouse, the building is speculative by its very nature. Its functional needs, whether loads, spans or spatial configuration, are tolerant anticipating any form of future use. Unlike its neighbour—a bank—it is not representational but innately approximate. 

In its construction, the building is also ad hoc. Grey brick and block walls delineate the plot. Punched ribbon windows draw the façade. Hollow clay pots span between T-beams to define the interior carcass. Concrete piers carry the weight of it all. It is a building that is thick and thin, plain and intricate. It deserves our curiosity.

The proposed intervention extends and doubles the existing volume. Externally, the new façade is a paraphrase of the existing. Its grid is inherited from the incumbent order which regulates everything from the height of the vertical piers to their width (and the space in between). Internally, the new floors are free-spanning to match the constructional logic below but shrink in plan to align with a new structural column line. The result is a completed whole, which takes approximate measurements from the grammar of the existing condition.

Within this logic, an infinite number of permutations are possible. The building envelope, dressed in thin folded sheets of galvanised steel, consists of a careful interplay between horizontal and vertical orders. Each component operates at multiple levels (structural, environmental, spatial, contextual and/or aesthetic). Deep projecting fins are placed directly above large sliding windows and hold the outer edges, compositionally suggesting the outline of the whole. Vertical fins provide a secondary order, which corresponds to the structural load bearing system and contains perhaps the most important generative element—the bay. The bay is subsequently repeated and adjusted in a game of precise approximations across each façade.

These approximations account for localised variations that occur at all scales and at every step. In some cases, they can be quantified and anticipated. In construction, an inherently complex and unpredictable process, they can be harder to define. Constant improvisation (or approximation) is required.

The brick, as a building unit, is approximate. It is a means of achieving an overall dimension unlike frame and panel construction, which can afford to be much more precise. At 469 Bethnal Green Road, what appears regular is irregular—chaos is very near. The width between each brick pier is slightly different. No two bays are exactly the same. These variations may be anticipated and captured within the construction drawings for the façade panels which are accordingly distorted. The new is adjusted to match the incidental nature of the old. Disorder is continued in an orderly manner.

In turn, hot dip galvanising demands precision. It is an archaic process—part art, part science. Before being dipped in molten zinc, the mild steel panels are propped, dangled and stripped to allow full adhesion. When dipped, temperature and speed are key—very hot and very quick. Once dipped, the time spent in the bath correlates to the number of microns of zinc coating and so, to the longevity of the panels. Afterward, the panels are lifted, dried and carefully packed to make their way to site.

Rather like glass, it is a dry form of construction (and also very fragile). It cannot be adjusted, sawn or chiselled on site like brick. Anticipation is required to bring order. Gaps and shadows create tolerance which is crucial. Such tolerance occurs at every joint between the façade panels. These are set to a minimum where flush, and to a greater threshold where interrupted—either vertically or horizontally. The shadows resulting from the articulation of the facade soften any perceived error arising from the fabrication process and allow for supple adjustments to be made on site. Chaos is kept at arm’s length within an evolving set of rules.

Beyond repetition, anticipation, and adaptation, there is exception. Exception is a form of approximation that generates its own set of rules, gives in to the possibility of something new and invents. The corner is an exception. Here, the rules are broken as circumstance takes over. The space between the verticals is stretched. The window is narrowly avoided. The sill is omitted. The brise-soleil is contorted and axially reoriented.

The corner—an invented piece—is more approximate and more precise (and more ambiguous, too). It embodies uncertainty and imagination. Always and already surprising. Allowing for the possibility of something completely different, which has everything to do with that from which it was born.

In search of precision, it is only natural to find approximation—from the number of microns of galvanic coating to the number of folds of metal that make up the façade. Rules exist to be pushed, pulled and (exceptionally) broken. This caters for circumstance, absorbs the mess and provides the basis for invention. And if, after each and every approximation, order is still in sight, then there can be greater certainty in the whole.

Part II Architectural Assistant

Senior Architect 

Architect

Through our collaboration with artists and material experts we have tested and experimented with the possibilities that hot-dipped galvanising can provide, to reveal a material finish which offers exceptional longevity and a unique visual appearance.

Unlike ‘applied’ finishes to metal, such as polyester powder coating (PPC), hot-dip galvanising creates a metallurgic reaction which effectively fuses the molten zinc to the base steel, and becomes integral to the steel. The primary benefit of this is to increase the corrosion resistance of the steel, but it also creates a highly unique visual finish, created by the ‘spangle’ of crystalised zinc that forms on the surface of the steel.

 furthered our material research into galvanising, in the form of a small workshop building which was entirely clad in galvanised steel, extending the artist’s existing studio facilities in London.

The use of hot dipped galvanised steel as a cladding material was chosen because of its ability to be both robust as well as create an intriguing aesthetic appearance. This was achieved through a rigorous research and prototyping process, with direct engagement with galvanising plants to understand how the process of hot dip galvanising could be controlled to achieve the desired precision of panel junctions and visual appearance.

To reach the desired material finish, each galvanising test refined the base steel specification and optimised the pre-folded form of the panel, so that the finished result yielded long lasting corrosion protection and an elemental, sculptural like quality to the finished building. Newly galvanised steel appears initially bright and reflective, but slowly softens as the surfaces oxidises, increasing its atmospheric resistance over time and mellowing into its setting. The research and development of this material technique has been applied to our project in Bethnal Green, which applies the same principles on a larger, city scale. 

Testing Hot Dipped Galvanised Steel 

 has been featured in Domus' April 2025 issue which focuses on the theme of 'Metal'. Entitled 'Leggero Equilibrio/Lightweight Equilibrium', the article explores the project's innovative use of aluminium and was selected for the issue by Domus' 2025 guest editor, Bjarke Ingels. 

Together with Shedkm and MAX Architects, we have been granted planning approval by Wandsworth Borough Council for a major redevelopment of the old Wandsworth Gasworks.

The project aims to transform the former west London gasworks into 620 homes, a riverside park and entertainment space. Drawing inspiration from Wandsworth's history, the new design will rejuvenate the site with environment, community and heritage in mind.

Within Shedkm's wider masterplan, Carmody Groarke will contribute 178 homes and 789m² of retail space, reviving the previously derelict site.

Nestled into the bankside of a riverbend beside a railway bridge, the design is shaped by the confluence of natural and infrastructural components. The tall, multi-residential building aspires to nurture a place-making quality in response to its unique setting, while retail spaces tucked into the railway arches further encourage community activation.

Carmody Groarke has transformed a former 1970s textile workshop on Bethnal Green Road into a contemporary, low-carbon workspace, offering a compelling model for urban reuse. Once slated for demolition, our client Unity Land recognised the potential to retain, reuse and reinvent the building. The result is a deep retrofit strategy that prioritises sustainability, structural retention, and architectural clarity.

This part of East London was heavily bombed during the Second World War, resulting in streetscapes characterised by fine-grain plots that vary in height, style, and age. Its urban tapestry— born from the speculative development of irregular plots— is unquestionably part of London’s high street character but it also recalls parts of other cities such as New York’s Soho district, with its skinny-framed buildings jostling for attention.

The project preserves and extends a grey-brick warehouse, doubling its usable area with a lightweight galvanized steel and Douglas fir addition. Adding three new storeys to the height of the existing structure increases the presence and improves the proportions of the corner building. Set on a narrow site above a Central Line vent tunnel, the design for the corner site retains the full concrete frame and foundations which now support a materially distinct but spatially consistent structure that replaces concrete with more sustainable components.


The result is a building that balances robustness with adaptability. Approximately 2,200 sqm of flexible workspace has been created, with minimal intervention and a focus on long-term efficiency. A striking new galvanised steel façade — just 3mm thick — is shaped into deep window reveals and horizontal fins, providing passive solar shading and a sense of depth to the façades, giving the whole ensemble a new elegance and gravity with very sparing use of material. This new façade responds to and complements the retained grey-brick base, yielding a coherent architectural expression that is both contemporary and contextual.

Internally, the layout is designed for future-proof adaptability. Free-spanning floors, modular fit-outs, and restrained finishes contribute to reducing lifecycle costs while maximising flexibility. Natural light is prioritised throughout, achieved through the use of sliding doors as windows. Exposed galvanised steel and Douglas fir timbers reference the site’s industrial past while simultaneously creating a warm, modern working environment reminiscent of a contemporary warehouse.


The ground floor has been opened up to reengage with the street, transforming a once-closed frontage into an active edge. Designed with flexibility in mind, the commercial unit can support a range of tenants, creating a vibrant threshold between the building and its urban context.


The entrance sequence has been completely reimagined to promote accessibility and visibility. A newly introduced staircase links all levels, while provisions for active commuting — including secure bike storage, showers, and changing facilities — reflect the project’s sustainability ethos.

The environmental strategy combines passive and active measures. By retaining the entire concrete frame, the design avoids the significant embodied carbon of new construction, instead focusing on low-carbon materials and reversible construction. The extension's components are bolted and demountable, allowing for future disassembly and reuse. Passive measures such as internal insulation, optimal glazing, and natural ventilation support year-round energy efficiency, supplemented by electric and renewable energy sources.


A BREEAM Excellent rating is being targeted, with post-occupancy evaluation planned to assess real-world performance. Designed with a 50-year lifespan in mind, this project provides a replicable model for workspace regeneration in dense urban contexts.


As a project, 469 Bethnal Green Road is a strategic act of addition rather than erasure — redefining the role of the existing building within East London and extending its life and civic presence with minimal material use. It becomes a prototype for buildings found on every high street.

A competition winning proposal by Carmody Groarke and Sheppard Robson for the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) reimagines Bankside House as a place for affordable, healthy and socially rich student life. The project responds to LSE’s ambition to provide exceptional student accommodation in one of the most vibrant parts of London, directly behind Tate Modern. The building will positively contribute to the London skyline marking a visible commitment to high-quality student living in the heart of the city. 

At the centre of the proposal is a simple but powerful question: how can a large group of students live well together? The response is both architectural and social. Rather than a single structure, the accommodation is conceived as three distinct buildings—three ‘houses’—each forming a community of around 650 students. Together they support a diversity of experience while fostering a strong sense of belonging.

This tripartite structure allows the project to maintain the intimacy and identity of smaller-scale living while meeting the large-scale demands of the brief. Each building will have its own character and its own social heart allowing students to identify not only with the wider LSE community but also with their own ‘house’.

Together, the three houses form a new urban cluster, cascading to frame the Tate Modern chimney as the centrepiece of the Southbank composition from Millenium Bridge. The spaces in between the houses are aligned to relate to major city landmarks of St Paul’s Cathedral and Tate Modern.




The houses are given a unified composition against the city skyline by their light-coloured precast facades and are grounded by a continuous base of Portland stone, whilst the pavilions are made from wood, giving a warm, welcoming character inside.

The triangular plan form of each house is composed of three bars, with each bar made up of different student room types. A student common room on each level is orientated to panoramic views of the Thames, from the Houses of Parliament to the City of London.

Between these three houses, two-storey pavilions at ground level accommodate the entrance hall and shared student amenity spaces. These pavilions bring the buildings to the ground, reinforcing the architectural rhythm and providing a communal threshold between each ‘house’.

A shared entrance, a collective threshold


Although expressed as three separate buildings, the scheme is unified at ground level by a shared arrival sequence. All residents and visitors enter through a single entrance hall—accessed via multiple doors—which acts as a collective threshold between the city and the student community. Oriented between the LSE campus and Tate Modern, this generous 24-hour ground floor is conceived as a ‘living room’.

Amenity and social spaces are distributed across the three buildings, supporting smaller, more manageable clusters within the larger whole. The interconnected lower floors and accessible garden terraces extend this sense of shared community and continuous movement through the site.

The design aspires to the highest standards of environmental and social sustainability. It targets Passivhaus certification, BREEAM Outstanding and WELL certification. These ambitions speak to a broader vision of student life that values comfort, health and long-term environmental responsibility as foundations for academic success and personal wellbeing.

Architectural Assistant

Studio Assistant 

Founded in the 14th century, the BnF houses the French national library collection, comprising over 40 million documents including 15 million books and journals, as well as manuscripts, prints, photographs, maps, coins, medals, videos and sound documents. The collection is stored within two central locations in Paris and a network of smaller sites throughout the city. 

Over the past three decades, the facilities have struggled to keep apace with evolving standards of collection care, and with the repositories projected to reach capacity, the BnF requires a completely new archive to accommodate the growing collection. In response to these challenges, the new conservation centre aims to create a world-class archive for the preservation of French cultural heritage, setting a new standard for excellence in library conservation and management.

The project comprises two buildings within a 11,000m2 masterplan: a 180m-long passive archive building for state-of-the-art collection storage and a bespoke timber framed office building for people and conservation processes. Located on the former Amiens hospital north site, the initiative forms part of an urban plan to establish a new cultural centre to the north and create a civic landmark in Amiens.

The archive building will store and protect the renowned French national library collection, one of the oldest in the world. The building will contain a vast single room with fully automated storage and retrieval systems operated by state-of-the-art robotic technology. It will provide over 280 linear kilometres of storage space within a low-oxygen environment to protect the collection from fire and water damage. 

The building will be highly airtight to create passive temperate control, significantly reducing energy consumption in operation. Externally, the building features an expressive steel exoskeleton encased in stainless steel mesh. The super-airtight and lightweight structure provides all-weather protection for the collection inside and gives the building a distinctive identity and presence. 

Innovative engagement strategies will increase public interaction with the collection by incorporating a viewing gallery into the west end of the building. The gallery will offer visitors and users a unique opportunity to look into the archive, revealing the robotic automation systems within.

The workplace building is strategically placed in front of the archive with elevated views back to the city centre landmarks. The building will allow for modern digitisation of the historic collection and day-to-day collection care and management. The building will be structured with low-carbon timber and will feature a large courtyard in the centre to provide natural light, open green space and better connectivity between floors.

Director Andy Groarke was interviewed by Pamela Buxton for the RIBA Journal Contacts Book series, where he discussed the practice's focus on materiality and craft, highlighting key collaborators.

Andy mentioned the practice’s work with Hargreaves Foundry and Local Works, emphasising their role in material innovation, as well as long-time partner Harry Montresor for specialist façade design. He also recognised Elemental for their airtightness solutions, showcasing how these collaborations have been instrumental in shaping the practice's projects.

Associate Director Lukas Barry recently spoke to Tom Larsson, Grow Places and Dominique Staindl, South Facing, discussing the unique challenges and wider creative opportunities within the historic Truman Brewery site and our approach to heritage, conservation and environmental sustainability.

Director Andy Groarke recently delivered a lecture at The Berlage, Tu Delft entitled ‘Taking Care of Matters’.

The lecture began with an introduction to a number of key themes and guiding principles that run through the studio's work, including the lifespan of temporary and permanent projects, the adaption and reuse of existing buildings, the relationship between artists and architects and the accumulation of references and precedents that influence the character of a building.

This was followed by a conversation on the design and construction of two significant projects, 

The proposal retains as much of the existing 1980s office building as possible. Strategic zones of the highly optimised pre-stressed concrete structure are removed to introduce light and air into the deep floor plan.

The three-storey timber extension and new five-storey pavilion building maximise the potential loading of the existing structure without major alterations to the existing foundations.

The existing building presents itself as a fortress to the city, raised on a podium above ground level that prevents any access through the site. Three new ramps connect the surrounding streets to a podium level courtyard filled with low level planting, semi-mature trees and new public uses.

Work

Oliver's Yard

Covent Garden ApartmentDomus

The Making Of: The ArtPlay Pavilion

Covent Garden Apartment

Precise ApproximationsJerome Wren

ArtPlay Pavilion at Dulwich Picture Gallery

Hill House Box

Permanence is a PrivilegeAndy Groarke, Kevin Carmody

Carmody Groarke A+U 264

British Library, Boston Spa

Power Hall, Science and Industry Museum Manchester

Adaptive ReuseLukas Barry

Milan Giovenale

Bibliothèque nationale de France Conservation Centre

Truman BreweryGrow Places Podcast