Paradise SE11: a powerful demonstration of circularity

It is strange that the UK’s lowest-embodied-carbon mass-timber office development isn’t the most amazing thing about it.

The idea of paradise is not usually associated with the nine-to-five life of office buildings. Admittedly Paradise SE11 in Lambeth, London, takes its name from the adjoining Old Paradise Gardens, but the healthy workplace and human-centric design that FeildenCleggBradley Studios (FCBStudios) has set out to achieve means it isn’t a wholly inappropriate name.

Designed for flexibility, the ground floor offers space for workshop use, with the upper floors created for adaptability and reconfiguration to suit tenant needs. Soothing exposed timber and natural light floods into the floors, offering views out to the gardens and across to the city skyline. “Paradise represents a bold step forward in how we think about workplace design,” says Alex Whitbread, Partner at FCBStudios.

Completed five years ahead of RIBA’s 2030 sustainability targets, the six-floor building delivers 35% lower embodied carbon, locks away over 1,800 tonnes of CO2 – equivalent to the carbon emissions of building 24 new homes – and has been designed with a whole-life approach in mind. It is engineered for complete disassembly and reuse. Yes, you read that correctly, this mass timber building is a fully demountable structure.

Legacy materials

Every element, from junctions to finishes, was considered in detail to ensure neither the visual integrity nor the building’s sustainability goals were compromised.

One challenge was resolving material interfaces in a way that preserved the building’s demountable nature. Solutions such as grout or cementitious screeds were avoided. Instead, the team developed alternatives using stone wool insulation, dry-fix techniques and reversible fastenings. The project team eliminated adhesives in favour of mechanical fixings that allow for future disassembly and reuse. Even its self-cleaning, demountable terracotta tile façade is made to last 100 years and can be reused in the future.

Paradise SE11 is a powerful demonstration of simplicity, circularity and carbon-conscious design that can define the regenerative nature of global cities. Not bad for an office building.

Watch Whitbread and Bywater’s Head of Development Pavlos Clifton talk through how they tackled the challenges at b.link/FCBStudios_Paradise

Image credit | Andy Stagg