The UK's most pioneering concrete structure reuse at 50 Baker Street W1 is a story of overcoming challenges through deep collaboration.
50 Baker Street is Derwent London's newest development and has incidentally become a testbed for genuine innovation in concrete circularity as part of the sustainability story for the project. That is, it's the site of the UK's biggest-ever use of PRECS (Piecewise Re-use of Existing Concrete Structure). In simple terms, PRECS is the process of saving specific parts of an existing building's concrete structure and cleverly incorporating them in the new build.
The breakthrough came from a collaboration between the developer, Derwent London, and the project team, which includes architecture practice AHMM, engineering consultant Buro Happold, main contractor Multiplex, and specialist engineering contractors McGee. It was no smooth road, but by pulling together, the team solved a complex puzzle and pioneered a low-carbon concrete reuse solution. Our unique use of PRECS is set to become a viable and scalable circular economy model for future commercial developments.
Here's the story of how we got there.
