January 2022. K2 were approached in relation to the feasibility of refurbishing the upper floors of the Henry Cotton Building, an 8000m2 4-storey steel-framed asset within Liverpool John Moores University’s City Campus. Was a simple refurbishment of the building fabric the extent of the client’s ambition, or could something more transformative be achieved?
A major refurbishment and vertical extension to a 1980s university building for Liverpool John Moores University in central Liverpool. The project reimagines a failing and outdated structure, creating new capacity and transforming the appearance of the building while aligning with the client’s carbon reduction plan. The refurbishment is due to complete in June 2027.
Unremarkable and easy to miss until the 2019 demolition of the Churchill Way flyovers (the urban motorways that dominated this part of Liverpool following their construction in the 1960s), the building was designed in the post-modern style typical of the period, and familiar to out-of-town business parks across the country.
Lacking any discernible identity, and dwarfed by recent buildings on adjacent sites, the building did not make users feel welcome or valued. Acutely aware of the need to get staff and students back on campus after the Covid-19 pandemic, LJMU understood the value of improving the internal environment of the building.
We identified the principles required for refurbishment to meet the client brief: a new more open, generous and civic-feeling foyer as a celebration of entrance leading up to completely reordered upper levels achieved by removing the roof and vertically extending to create additional capacity, all wrapped in a crisp new highly insulated building envelope.
The increase in the building silhouette allowed us to address the lack of architectural presence, the refurbished building sitting more assertively amongst its neighbours. In composing new elevations to the top of the building, we contrasted the existing brick to the levels below with a crisp metal rainscreen cladding, punctuated by generous new windows more in scale with the building. The front elevation is animated with the activity within, with informal study spaces at second and third floor level for students and staff respectively visible behind panoramic glazing.
The refurbishment will instil a new civic quality to the Henry Cotton Building befitting an important university building and serve as a new eastern gateway to the city campus and wider city beyond.
What will Liverpool be like in 2061? Clearly, the design of a building should respond to current needs and those that are reasonably foreseeable, but to what extent should it try to anticipate a future where it can also thrive and remain relevant, both in its function, but also its form? Can it be easily adapted if that future doesn’t materialise?
Over the course of less than forty years, little of the surrounding context that stood when the Henry Cotton Building was built remains. Originally built behind a bottling works (that stood on the adjacent green space), and literally in the shadow of the flyovers, it was never designed to stand out.
The mantra that good architecture should exhibit ‘long-life, loose-fit, low energy’ was often drummed into me at university. The idea that a building was never ‘finished’ on completion, rather at the start of its life, through which it would constantly have to adapt according to social or technological change.
When the flyover came down, views across the city that hadn’t been seen in decades were opened up. Our work on the Henry Cotton Building has demonstrated the possibilities of refurbishment rather than demolition and new build to meet current client needs and allowed it to sit comfortably in its current context.
The land released by the flyovers (currently a sprawl of surface car parks and waste ground adjoining the remaining carriageways) is included in the St George’s Gateway master planning work undertaken by Liverpool City Council. It would be naïve to imagine that the city will not continue to evolve to meet its changing needs. We rarely have the luxury to control or influence events beyond our site boundaries, but we can equip our buildings with the flexibility to adapt to stand the test of time.
In the race to reach net zero carbon, the ability to creatively adapt and reinvent our buildings in response to changing needs and evolving cities has never been more important.
