Desk jockeys: just add glass ... how new light has transformed a dingy courtyard garden into a new shared atrium for EMI.

As the environmental debate has moved from green to brown fields, it is time to add grey buildings to the agenda: a generation of redundant buildings that sit empty and abandoned in the shadow of an apparently relentless new generation of office developments. When the design of speculative offices seems relatively standardized, with cladding and cores defining the empty space in between as workplace, is there not a better way for us to regenerate cities? Once stripped of software--obsolete services and finishes that by their very nature have a short shelf life--how can we upgrade the structural hardware to avoid unnecessary waste?

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For EMI, Prestbury Holdings and architects MoreySmith, the opportunity to demonstrate the financial, environmental and social benefits of this option were recently tested in Kensington, London. Within the shell of the former Penguin Book's headquarters, a new space has been created that forms a focus for four previously dispersed EMI companies. Through the reuse of this building, and specifically its dingy courtyard garden, the EMI Group, EMI Recorded Music (Global and Continental Europe), and EMI Classics are now housed together under a new roof.

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For Linda Morey Smith and her team, finding the building and suggesting its reuse was a real coup, leading her ten-year-old practice into a new field of architectural intervention. Through their vision and enthusiasm, they managed to convince both tenant and landlord to invest in a structure that had insufficient ventilation, inadequate daylighting and limited floor loadings.

The simplicity of the main moves belies the complexity that working with exciting buildings inevitably entails. But the appeal to their commercial clients was clear--add glass. First, re-glaze the prominent facade to provide a new five-storey showcase addressing High Street Kensington; second, glaze over and around the courtyard; third, re-spray the unsightly and severely dated 1970s red aluminium window frames and cladding panels. Then, add to the atrium a luminous white skin of glazed bricks and a series of feature elements--balconies, stairs and stripped down lift shafts--and you very nearly have a new building.

Clearly it was not as easy as one, two, three. Indeed in response to the building's primary purpose--to unite four distinct and highly image conscious companies, each with its own distinct brand--significant design diplomacy was needed when considering the environment on each floor, not to mention the significant structural improvements and complex services co-ordination that lie behind the new skins. But, in a single move, the new atrium does provide a number of key benefits; improved daylighting significantly reduces the reliance on artificial light, and underfloor heating, high level ventilation, and heat reclamation create a stable buffer zone for more conventionally controlled office spaces. Furthermore the atrium also eliminates the need for dark centralized corridors, providing continuous routes via balconies, glazed bypass bridges, and casually through informal desk layouts.

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EMI have now moved into their new home, and are very happy, but the true measure of the success of the project is that on completion Prestbury Holdings sold the property to a new landlord, Englander, no doubt for a significant profit.

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