Formerly home to J. P. Morgan, the late 1980s-built office building at 20 Finsbury Dials occupies a prominent 0.75-acre site just a stone’s throw from both the new Elizabeth Line stations at Liverpool Street and Moorgate.
Greycoat Real Estate, in partnership with Goldman Sachs, is undertaking a major circular economy-focused redevelopment of the building, centred around Stiff+Trevillion’s architectural vision to create a highly sustainable modern office asset. The scheme, now known as DIALS, will offer 140,000 sq ft of best-in-class space across lower ground, ground, and six upper floors, together with a new landscaped terrace at roof level.
Waterman provided the structural engineering design for the original build back in the late 1980s and returned to breathe new life into the asset through a comprehensive retrofit and extension. For this latest iteration, our specialists are providing multidisciplinary support, seeing our structures and environmental experts work closely with Stiff+Trevillion and the wider project team. Harnessing our knowledge of the existing structure, our re-design is helping unlock the scheme’s potential and minimise the quantum of new material added, all whilst maximising the floor space on offer.
Delivered by principal contractor, Erith, the remodelling will offer floor plates of just over 20,000 sq ft and floor-to-ceiling heights of around 2.9m, creating spacious, adaptable workspaces. With user experience and wellbeing a key priority, tenants will benefit from access to new amenity space through the addition of a terrace and pavilion at roof level. A new external canopy will help to reposition the building and draw focus to the new double-height reception on the corner of Chiswell Street and Finsbury Street.
A secondary ’amenity’ entrance will also be incorporated to provide direct access from Chiswell Street. Taking a sensitive approach with our interventions, our structural solution will release an additional 8% of space typically per floor using minimal structural adaptations through the use of transformative design techniques. Following thorough investigation of the existing structure’s properties and load capacities, our design is facilitating the transformation of the open five-storey atrium and the addition of the new ‘Club Room’ pavilion at roof level. To deliver this, the original atrium will be infilled using a low carbon solution featuring CLT floor slabs to limit the weight, enabling the retention of the existing structural frame and foundations.
Throughout the design process, the project team worked collaboratively to drive down embodied carbon, retain the original building fabric, re-use existing materials on site, and source reclaimed materials wherever possible.
This approach led to the selection of a high proportion of cement replacement for newly added concrete elements, whilst the steel sections required for the new structural elements are being sourced from Cleveland Steel’s reclaimed steel inventory. Elsewhere, the new corner infill will be partially supported by repurposing the existing cladding steels. From a building-wide total of 1,282 tonnes of steel, 89.7% will be retained steel, with the balance of the new steel elements to be split between 75% repurposed and only 25% by weight new steel.
With several large areas of the original 1980s pink granite façade being removed to facilitate the new high efficiency glazed atrium and entrances, ceramics specialists Solus are repurposing this waste material as aggregate for the large terrazzo floor tiles which will be used extensively throughout the refurbishment.
As a result of this focus on material circularity, the design team has slashed both embodied and whole-life carbon, achieving a remarkable performance metric of 500kgCO 2/sqm.
To minimise the environmental impact of the building’s operation, this all-electric building will incorporate high-efficiency MEP technology, reducing operational carbon whilst maintaining performance. Looking to the future, the commercial spaces will be futureproofed through the specification of capped services on office floors, allowing tenants to implement custom fit outs without major services interventions.
Set to complete in autumn 2025, this exceptional scheme is targeting BREEAM ‘Outstanding’, EPC ‘A’, WELL ‘Platinum’, NABERS ‘5*’, and WiredScore ‘Platinum’ ratings.
