Waugh Thistleton Architects

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The Black & White Building 1
The Black & White Building 2
The Black & White Building 3
The Black & White Building 4
The Black & White Building 5
The Black & White Building 6
The Black & White Building 7
The Black & White Building 8
The Black & White Building 9

Location

Hackney

Status

Completed
November 2022

Client

The Office Group

RIBA workstages

Planning to Completion

Size

4480 m2

Awards

RIBA London Award 2024, RIBA London Client of the Year

Advanced Architecture Awards 2024, Best Timber Construction Project

BCO Regional Awards 2024 (Shortlisted)

AJ Architecture Awards 2023, Workplace Project (up to £20 million)

Wood Awards 2023, Sustainability and Commercial & Leisure

NLA Awards 2023, Workplace Award and The Mayor's Prize Award

Structural Timber Awards 2023, Commercial Project of the Year (Shortlisted)

Dezeen Awards 2023, Sustainability (Longlisted) 

Construction News Awards 2023, Low Carbon Project of the Year (Shortlisted)

Architectural Review Future Project Award 2022, Office Category

WAFX Award 2022 (Shortlisted)

The simplicity of this fully engineered timber office building belies its groundbreaking innovation. Setting a powerful sustainable agenda with only 410 kgCO2e/m2 embodied carbon (A1-A5), material use has been optimised. Each component is designed to be as efficient as possible, resulting in an honest design without excess.

Designed to offer flexible, shared workspace to companies this modest yet significant building with a powerful sustainable agenda is the tallest engineered timber office building in central London.

A hybrid structure comprising a beech LVL frame with CLT slabs and core has been designed to create vast open workspaces. With no structural internal partition walls and the MEP carefully co-ordinated to minimise visual intrusion, the layout can be easily adapted as future demands change.

The design is expressed through the constituent parts, avoiding excess or unnecessary architectural flourishes and the beauty of the completed building stems from the inherent qualities of each layer and each material without decoration.

The state of the art timber structure is framed by the glazed curtain wall, with solar shading provided by a second skin of vertical timber louvres. A parametric model simulating the movement and impact of sun against the façade determines the layout and form of the louvres, demonstrating how timber, combined with cutting edge digital analysis of environmental performance, can result in a truly 21st century building.