Holyrood Offices Building, Edinburgh, Photographs, SNP, News International

Holyrood Building, Edinburgh

Old Town Redevelopment propery design by 3Reid Architects Scotland

Photos from 3DReid:

3DReid’s Gordon Lamb House Proving Popular With Prospective Tenants

15 Apr 2008

Holyrood Office Building

The Scottish National Party and News International, publishers of The Sun, are both vying to take space at Gordon Lamb House, a new office development recently completed by 3DReid on one of the last few remaining gap sites in the historic centre of Edinburgh.

The 12,000sqft development, for client Keiller (Edinburgh) Ltd, is located close to the Scottish Parliament and incorporates the contemporary use of zinc cladding and rendered wall panels to create a high quality aesthetic in keeping with the high expectations of a World Heritage Site.

A key requirement of the client was to maximise the potential lettable floor areas within this constrained city centre gap site. Euan McLaren, Project Architect at 3DReid, explains how this was done:

“We have built right up to the plot boundary despite the proximity of adjacent buildings (whilst providing natural ventilation and maximising glazed openings permissible by the Scottish Building Regulations). This required a thorough understanding of the Building Standards and in depth discussions with Building Control.

We moved all of the circulation and services (WC’s etc) to the North of the building in a very efficient and clearly visible core as opposed to positioning the core in the centre of the plan as is more common. This provided the largest office floor plates possible.”

He continued: “We used high spec insulation with timber infill panels to the external walls to minimise the overall thickness of the wall build-up whilst maintaining U-value requirements. A clear span (and therefore increased floor area) was achieved despite the requirement to minimise the overall structural zone of each floor in order to reduce the overall building height as determined by the Planning department. This also required careful integration of services in the floor and ceiling zones.”

The top floor is stepped back both to respect adjacent properties, provide a roof terrace for the fourth floor offices, which will enjoy views of Salisbury Crags to the South, and to break down the overall mass of the building. It is common for the uppermost floor of the buildings in the Old Town to be expressed differently (whether it be through form or materials) and allows the ‘top, middle and bottom’ to be clearly read.

Photographs by Adrian Welch, Sep 2007: