4 Arbour Street, Copper Square

shedkm’s 14-storey office building at Brent Cross Town combines a precast concrete frame with cross-laminated timber floors to reduce embodied carbon while providing flexible workspace alongside the new Brent Cross West station.

Photos
John Sturrock
Jack Hobhouse

shedkm has completed 4 Arbour Street, Copper Square, a 14-storey office building at Brent Cross Town in north London. Designed for Related Argent, the 30,202 square metre building is the first office completed as part of the new business and innovation district and provides 246,766 square feet of workspace, retail and food and beverages. Its first six floors, comprising around 111,000 square feet, will be occupied by Sheffield Hallam University for its first satellite campus in London.

The building occupies a prominent gateway site beside the new Brent Cross West station entrance, which was co-designed by shedkm and Studio Egret West. Formerly occupied by railway servicing yards, industrial sheds and large-format retail units, the wider site is being transformed as part of the 180 acre Brent Cross Town development. The proximity of the station required particularly close coordination during construction: 11 storeys were built above the station while its entrance remained operational, with a gap of just 400mm between the two structures.

A hybrid structural system developed by shedkm with Heyne Tillett Steel of a precast concrete frame supports cross-laminated timber floor slabs, allowing the building to reach 14 storeys while reducing embodied carbon by around 30 per cent compared with conventional construction. A full-scale replica of a structural bay underwent a two-hour fire test as part of the certification process, while the precast concrete elements use a 50 per cent GGBS replacement for cement.

Internally, the exposed timber structure gives the workspaces a warmer material character, particularly effective in the large penthouse office suites at level 13, where a monopitch roof exposes timber soffits and CLT walls. The floorplates accommodate a range of workplace configurations, while the university occupation of the lower floors demonstrates the adaptability built into the scheme from the outset.

Four planted roof terraces are distributed across levels 12, 13 and 14, providing space for outdoor working, informal meetings and views across London towards Wembley Stadium and Hampstead Heath. The terraces extend the usable workplace beyond the internal floorplates and form part of the building’s wider emphasis on occupant wellbeing.

The project has been developed in response to Brent Cross Town’s environmental targets. It is targeting BREEAM Outstanding, with upfront embodied carbon calculated at 628kg CO2e/m² and whole-life embodied carbon at 930kg CO2e/m², excluding operational energy and water. Operational energy is estimated at 47.43kWh/m²/year. The building also provides 232 cycle spaces and lockers, together with 23 showers.

As the first workplace building to complete within Brent Cross Town, 4 Arbour Street establishes a model for the commercial phases that will follow. The wider development is planned to provide up to 6,700 homes, more than 50 shops, restaurants and cafés, three million square feet of office space and more than 50 acres of parks and playing fields, with workspace for more than 25,000 people.