Bracken House, London EC4

Bracken House was commissioned by The Financial Times (FT) as its new headquarters and newspaper printing works. It was designed in the stripped Classical style by Sir Albert Richardson. Completed in 1959, Richardson called it his ‘City Palace’.

After acquiring Bracken House in 1987, the long-term owner, Obayashi Corporation, commissioned Michael Hopkins & Partners to remodel Richardson’s design to create a contemporary new office building suited for the burgeoning financial markets of the period. It is widely considered to be an architectural masterpiece. Bracken House is the first post-war office building to be listed in 1987. The Hopkins additions were included in the Grade II* listing in 2013.

Thirty years later, John Robertson Architects was selected by Obayashi as the third generation of architects to be involved with Bracken House. Our sensitive design and considered interventions has made it possible for the FT to return to this iconic building.

We set out to embrace and celebrate the quality and detail of the original building, find a balance between renewal, re-use and the new, and give expression to these different architectural ‘layers’. Our approach was influenced by Kintsugi – the Japanese art of repairing pottery with gold infill to ennoble rather than disguise intervention.

JRA has retrofitted Bracken House in the City of London for Obayashi Corporation. Originally designed by Albert Richardson in the early 1950s as the headquarters and print works for the Financial Times, the building underwent a dramatic reconstruction in 1988 by Michael Hopkins and Partners.

After a quarter of a century of use, JRA has sensitively refurbished the Grade II* listed building. The building has been altered to provide an enlarged entrance hall, new internal courtyards, which link the central office space with the 1950s wings, and a landscaped roof garden with a running track. The offices have been completely modernised with a new energy efficient air conditioning system and state of the art LED lighting. Additional daylight has also been introduced into the atrium by partially glazing the atrium roof.

After an absence of almost 30 years, the Financial Times has now returned to Bracken House as its new headquarters.

The new enlarged entrance hall enhances the experience of entering the building and creates generous lounge and waiting areas. The existing glazed partitions and timber screens were reused and relocated, enclosing the space and forming a welcoming ‘open arms’ gesture to draw visitors into the central atrium and circulation area.

A new section of clear glazing was inserted into the existing atrium roof as a discrete intervention with high impact, facilitating an improvement of 150% in daylighting.

JRA created new internal courtyards to serve as a threshold between the historic wings and the central floorplate by Hopkins, unifying these office spaces and providing improved daylighting and connectivity.

In the historic wings, a modern version of the original bespoke circular light fittings was developed to maintain the spirit of the original Richardson design. The ceiling levels were raised to improve the floor to ceiling heights in these areas.

JRA worked closely with ARUP to plan the refurbishment and used Building Information Modelling Level 2 for design coordination and managing clash detection. The finished model contains over 27,000 items charting every aspect of the construction, which will enable repairs and replacements to be carried out with ease in the future.

The realisation of the roof terrace references Sir Michael Hopkins original vision for the roof as the ‘fifth elevation’ of the building. It is a major amenity for the office users. Inspired by the illusionistic ceiling painting on the oval dome inside Palazzo Carignano, the sinuous curvilinear landscaping draws on the legacy of the previous generations of architects and complements the extraordinary cityscape surrounding the building.

The roof terrace design had to comply with the constraints imposed by the St Paul’s Heights Grid. This limited the height of any interventions made within the area of the roof scape. The new roof landscaping scheme has been modulated to follow the ascending grid.