The Fitzrovia - Decomo UK Ltd
The Fitzrovia, Tottenham Court Road, London, sits at a juncture between more modern development and the old Victorian and Edwardian building stock of the area. The design marries the need for rejuvenated retail and office space with an elegant historic feel. The new building replaces an unsalvable 1960s building with a six-storey mixed-use development which will provide 65,000 sq. ft. of Grade A office space and 11,000 sq. ft. of retail space. The striking façade of the building is clad in three different facing materials, the most notable being the celadon-glazed terracotta which adorns the scalloped bays on the Tottenham Court Road and Bayley Street elevations. As you move round to the Morwell Street elevation the frontage transitions from the terracotta bays to brick clad premium residential units, with a distinctive grey basalt base to the façade tying the elevations together.
Before settling on the design, multiple façade design options were considered for the project including unitised curtain wall, SFS with rainscreen and precast concrete. Ultimately, it was precast concrete which was chosen to best accommodate the scalloped profile and curved nature of the design. Precast concrete also offers limited penetrations to the weather line compared to the likes of a rainscreen system which have a significant amount of bracketry leading to thermal bridging. Thinner facing material is also possible with a faced precast solution than on a typical rainscreen solution.
Precasters Decomo were given the task, by contractors Kier and PCE, of bringing to life the distinctive design created by award-winning architects Stiff + Trevillion. The complex textured terracotta cladding panels are donut shaped and faced with extruded terracotta tiles. The precast backing provides a very robust substrate for the various facing materials, resulting in good impact performance. This meant that there was no need for a sub-frame to support the ceramic reducing the materials used.
Fire performance should always be a key consideration, especially in a residential development. The inherent non combustibility of concrete sets it apart from other construction materials, reducing risk. Concrete façade build-ups like the ones on the Fitzrovia also benefit from fire stops and cavity barriers being simpler to achieve than with a rainscreen type construction methodology where there are lots of cavities inherent in the build-up.
The Fitzrovia is designed to the highest environmental standards, achieving BREEAM Outstanding with a strong focus on health and wellbeing, as well as being awarded a 5 Star Design for Performance NABERS rating. Using Ground Granulated Blast-Furnace Slag (GBBS) in the concrete mix saved 25,000 kg of CO2 across the project and the use of Basalt fibre reinforcement (BFR) instead of steel mesh saved over an additional 30,000 kg of CO2.
The social impact of the project was a key consideration for contractors PCE. In dense urban environments like London, construction traffic, noise, and activity can cause significant disruption. By utilizing offsite Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DfMA) concrete solutions, Kier, PCE, and Decomo effectively minimised these disturbances.
Offsite manufacture not only reduces site activity and improves quality but also boosts health and safety with less working at height and manual handling. The offsite approach also reduces required deliveries by up to 80%, waste by up to 90%, with a significant reduction in noise and dust.
Speed of precast installation is also a big reason to go down the concrete MMC route and without the requirement for material storage on site, the programme can be designed around just-in-time delivery. For the Fitzrovia, completion was achieved in 26 weeks from starting on site with only 25 or less operatives onsite at any one time. The large nature of the panels and with up to 6 being installed per day meant that significant areas of the façade could be made fully weather tight quickly.
Over 2,100 units were manufactured and installed for The Fitzrovia from 6 different offsite specialists across the UK and Europe, testament to the strength and depth of the precast concrete supply chain. This included brick-faced sandwich panels, stairs, landings, upstands, twin and solid walls. Additionally, 5,000m2 of concrete in-situ flooring and over 1,000 hollowcore slabs helped reduce material usage.