A Sustainable Office Development for British Land at 2 Finsbury Avenue

We are delighted to have secured a substantial structures package at 2 Finsbury Avenue, a project in the last phase of British Land’s iconic Broadgate campus in the city of London. This follows our successful demolition and deconstruction works which completed in July 2023.

Basement and core construction

We are employing top-down methodology to deliver a 3-storey basement concurrently with two slip formed cores, 37 and 23 storeys respectively. The East and West cores will be uniquely joined by a 12-storey podium which has been designed to provide 9000 square feet of recreational space for a proposed Winter Garden. The steel frame will be constructed by other contractors, and we will be placing the concrete for the composite floors.

Sustainable development objectives

The new office building at 2 Finsbury Avenue is set to create a new benchmark in highly sustainable workspace. It will also be targeting net zero carbon in relation to the construction and operation. Other ambitions for the project include BREEAM ‘Outstanding’ and WELL Platinum certification.

The reuse of structural steelwork

The development has been designed with circular economy principles in mind, focussing on upcycling and adaptable design or design for disassembly. Maximum recovery of materials and building elements was sought during the demolition phase for later upcycling and reuse within the new development.

Through a process now known as ‘urban mining’, our demolition team recovered 98 structural beams from the existing building to be incorporated into the new structure.

We also recovered 100 aluminium strips destined for upcycling and reuse in an architect designed feature wall. Multiple cladding panels were recovered for reuse in some ancillary buildings, and we were able to recover over 9000 floor tiles and carpet tiles which were upcycled and/or recycled by our specialist supply chain.

Innovative logistics solutions

City centre construction often requires innovative logistics solutions. To overcome the lack of space for a crane within the existing site footprint, we have erected a raptor crane on the very substantial slipform rig being used to deliver the East core. In due course, a similar solution will be employed on the West core.

Morrisroe project manager Lee Henry comments: "Our team are proud to be involved in delivering a project of such scale in the heart of the city. Our basement dig will involve the removal of some 32,000m³ of material and the size of the East core is nothing short of breathtaking."

A total of 38,000m³ of concrete will be placed along with 5,200 tonnes of rebar to complete our superstructure and substructure package.

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