Major £12m Fleet Street refurbishment

STO interior finishes for major £12m Fleet Street refurbishment.

STO interior finishes for major £12m Fleet Street refurbishment Just across from the Royal Courts of Justice in London are three Grade II listed buildings that comprise 7-15 Fleet Street.

They are flanked, much to Horace Rumpole's approval no doubt, by Wildy and Sons the law booksellers and The Four Vintners.

The empty buildings were acquired by The Honourable Society of the Middle Temple in 1999 and after five years of major refurbishment, at a cost of some £12m, the site has re-opened as Quadrant House.

It is home to Quadrant Chambers (formerly 4 Essex Court), a leading set of barristers' chambers specialising in commercial litigation, particularly maritime and aviation matters.

The site has seen many changes over the centuries and at one stage was occupied by nine properties with five frontages onto Fleet Street.

This recent refurbishment has unified the last three divisions which consist of The Legal and General site (of literary interest as the first folio of Shakespeare's plays were issued from here in 1623), the Union Bank site (one of the first joint-stock banks) and The Rainbow (in 1650 London's second coffee house and later the site of the first fire insurance company, mentioned by Dickens in Sketches by Boz).

Central atrium space is key feature.

The major structural work took place within the Legal and General building, where the centre was cleared away to allow the creation of an atrium.

All the internal walls and floors were removed down to basement level to allow the formation of new lift pits.

The centre was then reconstructed with a steel frame and steel deck/concrete composite floors.

At roof level areas, pitched roofs were re-slated, new lead flat roofs laid and a glass roof installed over the atrium.

The Union Bank building is largely intact, although a distinctive and stunning feature is the curved glass wall enclosing the side of the atrium across the old lightwell.

The glass wall is around 16 metres high and provides a physical link with The Rainbow building, yet maintains a visual separation between these two distinctive buildings.

Ray Freeland of architects BBF-Fielding summarises: "the concept for the refurbishment was simple enough in principle - a central atrium space to unite the three buildings".

" However, there was a major challenge in resolving the different floor levels, not only between the buildings, but from front to back within the Legal and General building".

" By introducing split level decks, ramps, steps, two lifts and making some alterations to floor levels this was achieved and wheelchair access was made possible to all but three of the offices." In keeping with such a modern, stylish building interior, the finishes on the ceilings and walls in the atrium area had to combine sophistication with functionality - along with the requirement for an acoustic ceiling that would comfortably blend in with the rest of the décor.

The natural choice was Sto, a company originally founded in Germany over 150 years ago.

Sto is now a major multi-national organisation dedicated to the development of products and systems that protect, maintain and enhance the interior and exterior of buildings while extending their functional and aesthetic durability.

The atrium area at Quadrant House provided Sto with the opportunity to feature a number of its interior finishes.

A stunning modern interior.

The concept of colouring and marbling plasters goes back to Roman times and Sto has taken the original principle and developed it with modern materials under the name of StoLook Veneziano, part of the Linea di Calce polished plaster systems range.

Two Veneziano finishes have been used on the walls in the atrium.

Classico, which provides a smooth polished plaster finish and Rustico, which offers a contrasting, durable natural stone effect plaster, yet still retains the low maintenance benefits of a polished plaster.

First Sto Verotec boards were fixed to the interior walls using Sto SW150 galvanised steel lining system.

StoLevel Uni, a reinforcing levelling plaster, was applied to the lining system along with a glass fibre mesh to provide a tough crack resistant coating.

StoLook Veneziano-Classico was then trowel applied to this finish, polished and finally waxed.

Rustico is slightly different in that marble chips are added.

This requires a sponging process after the first application to bring the aggregate to the surface, which is then trowelled flat.

In the atrium area the Veneziano-Rustico finish has been used to form a contrasting band with the Classico effect, resulting in a pleasingly sophisticated appearance.

The stylish interior detailing in the atrium area, particularly around doors and lift entrances has been achieved by using profiles from the StoDeco Art system.

This prefabricated range incorporates options such as wall and ceiling dado profiles, corner tracks, rosettes, plinth profiles and rectangular columns and capitals.

They are high quality features manufactured from a granular material called Verofill which combine harmoniously with any existing stucco elements.

StoDeco Art is lightweight, has a high compressive strength resulting in very high impact resistance - and is easily installed using the StoSista system adhesive.

The profiles are mostly in high traffic areas and have been finished with a tough scrubbable paint, StoColor Latex 5000, which was colour matched to the natural marble finish of the StoLook Veneziano polished plaster.

StoColor Latex 5000 allows repeated overpainting without going brittle or flaking.

Solving the atrium acoustics problem.

The combination of glass and polished plaster in the atrium area of the five-storey building is naturally resonant and could result in an acoustics problem for the atrium itself and the surrounding areas.

A 145m2 StoSilent acoustic ceiling more than met the requirements over the five storeys of the split level walk ways of the atrIum.

The core product in the StoSilent ceiling system is the StoSilent panel, a suspended sound absorbent board which allows seamless areas of up to 200m2 to be created.

The panels, which are manufactured from 96% recycled blown glass, plus a special binder, are extremely durable, but light and easy to handle and cut on site.

They have a porous surface with high levels of acoustic absorption over a wide range of frequencies, particularly in the speech band frequency of between 500-4000 hertz.

The almost micro-porous characteristics of the panels overcome reverberation time (RT) by absorbing sound and transferring it behind the board and into the void, where it is converted into heat and effectively disappears.

The system, which is completely impervious to humidity, is completed with a coat of StoSilent Superfein acoustic fibre-free plaster, available in a comprehensive choice of 465 colours from the StoColor Sytem.

Numbers 7 - 15 Fleet Street have seen many changes in their long history, but arguably none quite as dramatic as the results of this stunning five-year, £12m refurbishment.

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