engineering.
139 tonnes of salvaged steel from a scheme currently being demolished in the City of London will be used in the Roots in the Sky development which is due to start on site in the coming months and complete in Q3 2025.
The exisiting 1960s building – a former stationery office and Crown Court – has been radically reimagined as over 400,000 sq ft of next-gen workspace and will be London’s first office building to deliver an urban forest rooftop with unprecedented, dedicated access for the local community and the public, with community gardens and collaborative neighbourhood uses, a rooftop restaurant, bar and swimming pool. The building will be one of the largest roof gardens in Europe, which will have a significant contribution to London’s progressive targets for greening, biodiversity and sustainability. The project was taken through planning by Studio RHE and engineer Symmetrys, and is now in delivery phase with architect Sheppard Robson.
The reused steel shows a continued commitment by our client team in the effort of ‘urban mining’, where materials are reclaimed from existing developments in order to reduce the embodied carbon within its schemes. The salvaged metal has been delivered to Cleveland Steel for testing and preparatory works ahead of it being used within the new scheme.
The British Constructional Steelwork Association (BCSA) is currently drafting a model specification for buying reused steel which will be the first industry guidance of its kind. Although reuse of some building materials is already common, this one is the most significant attempts to apply the circular economy to structural elements of buildings.
“This is an important additional tool in allowing us to deliver low-carbon buildings and move towards a circular economy. Recovering and reusing the steel certainly has its challenges, but with developers like Fabrix pushing the agenda, we are moving one step closer to allowing this practice to become common within the industry.”
Gerry O’Brien, AKT II director.
