Sustainability at Project Lucent, W1

Lucent W1 project’s ambitious scope included the take down and rebuild of historic facades beneath iconic Piccadilly digital advertising boards with a significant reuse of existing materials. The project involved three different buildings, one of which was listed, two types of stone and faience. Lucent – Szerelmey

This complex project had planning conditions that required a significant reuse of the existing materials, which was at times challenging, but ultimately very rewarding! The project involved a listed Portland stone building 4-6 Glasshouse Street, a Bath stone building 1 Sherwood St and 8 Glasshouse Street, and a faience façade at 11-17 Shaftesbury Avenue. The two stone facades had to be dismantled to enable structural works to take place behind. After detailed surveys, drawings, photographs and recording, the stones were carefully dismantled and shipped to Wolff Stone in Somerset to be repaired. Due to the historic construction method, every piece of salvaged stone had to be reduced in thickness while being restored to allow for reinstatement as part of a modern cavity wall to provide a cavity of 150mm.

Some of the stone was quite badly damaged although we were able to salvage 80% of the Bath stone facades and 90% of the Portland façade. The salvaged and repaired stones were returned to site and the facades installed with new supporting structure behind. The remaining % of new stone required was sourced from Stone Firms and Lovell. both of whom are suppliers who operate with high sustainable credentials, with Albion Stone offering and EPD on their Portland stone.

Overall the % of stone that was able to be reused was very good and the contrast between the historic reused stone and the new stone patched in, allows the history of the building to be told visually. It is worth noting that in pure Carbon terms, the shipping of the stone from site to be restored and back to site again was greater than new stone being shipped straight to site. However, this should be balanced with other factors such as not diminishing a natural resource and retaining the historic precedence of the building. 100% of the existing stone that was not able to be salvaged was recycled for use as aggregate, with zero landfill.