4 Pancras Square by Eric Parry Architects

4 Pancras Square, London, was presented at the AT Awards live finals on 20 September 2023 to a jury comprising Sunand Prasad, Marion Baeli, Chris Bicknell, Heather Topel, Hanif Kara, and Chair Catherine Burd. Read about how the project has stood the test of time.

Credit: Dirk Lindner

Completed
2017

4 Pancras Square is an 11-storey commercial building designed by Eric Parry Architects. Located on a brownfield site adjacent to London’s St Pancras International Station, the scheme comprises reception and retail space on the ground- and lower-ground floors, ten storeys (18,050 square-metres) of office space on the upper floors, and two basement levels. A roof garden, incorporating indigenous planting, ponds, boulders and oak decking, crowns the building and provides panoramic views over the city.

Intended to evoke the site’s industrial heritage, the façade employs a weathering steel exo-skeleton with white-glazed, ceramic brise-soleil shading. Set-backs and balconies provide additional protection from solar gain, while also maximising daylighting and outside resources.

Credit: Dirk Lindner

Key priorities were flexibility of the building, user well-being and a long-life, loose-fit approach. The current tenants have installed a wide range of spaces, including a raked screening cinema, a professional recording studio, a yoga and pilates studio, and a variety of scaled social spaces. Office ceiling heights of 3.2 metres far exceed the British Council of Offices (BCO) standard, helping increase daylight to the occupied spaces. Exposed concrete soffits provide thermal mass and reduce peak loads on M&E services, which include a displacement air system and centralised CHP energy centre.

Consistency of building services equipment, including controls and metering software/graphics, aligns with other developments and ensures ease of operation and efficiency. POE studies included constructing a ‘digital twin’ to compare design performance against actual BMS data. Overall, the project consumes 65 per cent less gas and electricity than a traditional office development of equivalent size and type, and was the first commercial building in the UK to achieve BREEAM 2014 ‘Outstanding’.