373 Euston Road

Situated within a sensitive heritage context on the outskirts of London’s Bloomsbury area, 373 Euston Road, formerly known as Cambridge House, has undergone a major refurbishment and extension. The transformation has created a striking six-storey building that accommodates a café and learning hub for students on the ground floor and basement, teaching and learning spaces on the upper floors, and a large modern lecture theatre in the new rooftop extension.

In order to extend the building upwards, extensive analysis of the existing building was carried out to ascertain its structural capacity, and although some strengthening works were necessary to allow for the additional loading, the focus was on proposing a lightweight extension that would minimise strengthening where possible.

The lightweight, copper standing seam extension is created using a steel transfer structure at the 4th floor which continues up to the lecture theatre above. CLT panels form the floors and load bearing CLT panels form the internal and external walls. The seating area in the lecture theatre follows the shape of the structure – meaning that no secondary structure was needed to support the seating – and is left exposed, with horizontal CLT panels spanning in between the supporting glulam beams.

By renovating and extending this 1920s former car showroom, the embodied carbon of the development was dramatically reduced. The use of exposed CLT and glulam for much of the new structure helped to reduce the carbon cost and the amount of finishes required.