The 65 Southwark Street Project encompasses the refurbishment and extension of a 1960’s office building in the central London borough of Southwark.

The refurbishment involves the modernisation of five existing office floors and the development of a retail tenancy with large street frontage. Combined with this is the construction of two additional open plan office floors, providing a modern economic building while utilising the existing building structure.

Included is the installation of a new façade over the existing building skeleton, which coupled with the glass exterior to the new office floors gives a modern look to the previously aged building.

Meinhardt was appointed on Design and Build duties with Structural and Civils being novated to Volker Fitzpatrick Limited. The project contains a number of significant engineering challenges, including the extension of an existing basement and foundations adjacent to exiting piles, removal of reinforced concrete columns supporting multiple floors, and co-ordination of new structural members required to support the continually loaded existing structure.

This project achieves a BREEAM rating of ‘Excellent’ which incorporates biomass boiler plant, using wood pellet fuel for a sustainable supply source.