Packman Lucas

The Eye, Procter Street

  • Architect - The Thomas Saunders Partnership
  • Location - London, WC1
  • Project Value - £120m

This was a project that involved the refurbishment and extension of three office buildings that were all built during the sixties. A unique feature of the buildings was a forty metre span of the central block that passes over the main one way system in Holborn. This was achieved with massive post tensioned, reinforced concrete beams at first floor level.

The client required the maximum possible lettable area for the building and this entailed adding two additional levels on the roof and extending the width of the existing floors by 15%. However we were not allowed to modify the primary beams in any way and so the additional floor space had to be achieved with out altering the total weight of building by more than five percent. This was achieved by removing large areas of unnecessary concrete structure with the existing building and by using only lightweight construction materials for the additional areas that were introduced. The figure of five percent applied throughout the construction process - we could only introduce new materials into the building as the demolished areas were removed and this entailed a careful, day-to-day balancing exercise by the contractor to ensure that the requirement was met.

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