Design Solution · Interior & Wellbeing
Design Solution · Dream about it
Open up concealed internal volume to add public space.
Disused and partitioned-off areas of an existing building are opened up and reconfigured to gain substantial public space without extending the footprint. Careful spatial surgery yields an 18 per cent increase in usable area. The strategy adds capacity to a constrained urban site with minimal new build.
Opening up partitioned or disused internal volume within an existing building to create an 18 per cent increase in usable area is a compelling argument for spatial surgery before new-build extension, particularly on a constrained urban site where any footprint expansion faces planning resistance. The appeal is that the building's historic shell — and the planning consent and heritage approvals it took to create — is already in place; the work is reconfiguration rather than addition. The record carries no provided evidence, and the 18 per cent figure is stated without the comparator or methodology that would make it meaningful to a different project. In practice, reclaiming concealed volume in a historic building means working within a fabric whose structure, services routing and fire-compartmentation may be deeply entangled with the partitions being removed, and the investigation costs before tendering can be substantial. Heritage consents for internal interventions vary significantly by designation and local authority, and what looks like an obvious spatial gain at concept stage sometimes becomes complicated once the building's actual section is understood. A productive framing for any institution looking to add capacity without a capital extension; the pre-design investigation budget should reflect the risk that the spatial gain is smaller or more expensive than the section suggests.
#adaptive reuse #spatial efficiency #museum