An adaptive reuse project designed by global architecture firm Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF) that would retrofit an existing 1980s office block in London is moving forward following approval from the City of London Planning & Transportation Committee.

The project, located at 81 Newgate Street, includes a "deep retrofit" of the existing structure that will reposition the building as a "sustainable, mixed-use building that is embedded in the wider public life of the City as a new gateway destination into London’s ‘Culture Mile,'" the architects write.

In a press release announcing the project, John Bushell, Design KPF Principal explains, “81 Newgate Street develops a number of reuse and transformation themes that KPF has been working on for a long time, from the World Bank in Washington DC, completed in 1996, to more recent projects in London, such as Unilever House, South Bank Tower and a collection of projects in Covent Garden." Bushell adds, "The mixture of reuse and invention generates projects with great character, preserving history whilst allowing for vigorous renewal and making substantial savings of embodied carbon.”

The project is set to include an expansion of the building, as well, efforts that are designed to increase interior daylighting while allowing for the introduction of planted terraces along the upper levels of the building, including a new public roof terrace. An existing atrium will be partially filled in with new elevator cores, while the new additions to the complex are designed as a "dynamic composition of smaller elements that step down from north to south." 

The plan features a slew of sustainable approaches, including a "zero to landfill" policy that will eliminate construction waste as well as the widespread reuse of Portland stone elements included in the existing structure.