Designed by Sir Denys Lasdun and completed in 1983, 76 Southbank started life as the office and client marketing building for IBM. It is considered Lasdun’s last major work and sits adjacent to his National Theatre.
Although the building was listed at Grade II in 2020 the building did not meet modern standards and presented an opportunity for sensitive qualitive and quantitative improvements both to the building itself and by pedestrianising its car-orientated relationship with the public realm.
AHMM have carefully refurbished and extended the building to deliver an additional 11,000 square metres of flexible and highly sustainable office space. The scheme has preserved this important building for the long-term future while greatly improving and enhancing its setting within the South Bank conservation area.
The building is a leading example of purposeful, low carbon design operating with renewably sourced energy from air and water source heat pumps alongside over 175 photovoltaic panels to create a fully electric building. Achieving both BREEAM Outstanding and 5-star certification under the NABERS Design for Performance standard the building takes advantage of its upgraded thermal envelope to create a highly energy efficient scheme with an embodied carbon figure of just 365kgCO2/m2.
Employee wellbeing is at the heart of the design with a range of flexible spaces provided for tenants to WELL Gold standards. These include 530 cycle parking spaces accessed via a ramp adjacent to the main entrance, high quality end of trip facilities and large outdoor terraces covering over 5,000 sqm. These spaces are brought to life through a sensitive and considered landscape design, irrigated using harvested rainwater as well as 20 new trees within the public realm. Overall, the development achieves over 200% improvement in biodiversity value.
