East Ham Old Fire Station

The most sustainable building is nearly always the one that is already built, so it was with pleasure and interest that we converted a Grade II-Listed former fire station in East Ham’s civic quarter into seven apartments and ground floor commercial space. The fire station closed in the 1960s and was converted into Council office spaces, which had a detrimental impact on the historic fabric of the building, with many original features stripped out and detracting elements such as dropped ceiling tiles added. Our aim throughout was to strip out unoriginal accretions and restore the character of the historic building whilst maximise living and commercial space.

The area is characterised by greenery and a cluster of other similar styled red-brick civic buildings built at the turn of the 20th century. The commercial unit at the ground floor of the building connects to the vibrancy of the high street, reinforcing the sense of place.

Apartment layouts are designed around the position of the heritage windows to set them off to their best advantage. The building’s main staircase has been refurbished and an additional new staircase has been introduced to improve the efficiency of the layout. The new staircase takes reference from the historic fabric, with its black steel winding steps and coloured rubber flooring echoing the colours of the historic quarry tiles found elsewhere in the building.

An existing yard located at the back of the building has been redesigned to provide a delightful, landscaped entrance for residents to enjoy and provides an attractive outlook for apartments facing east.

A tower with a splendid cupola provides a key feature to mark the building’s corner location. Four tall arched bays at street level facing towards the high street are what is left of the doors through which fire engines used to enter.

Our design involved the removal of detracting unoriginal elements and structures, with the aim of retaining and restoring the majority of the original fabric. Behind the façade we optimised the internal layout while keeping the building’s original structural walls. This improves access and maximises the number of units while creating layouts that meet contemporary design standards and aspirations.

At ground level we neatly refurbished the former fire engine room to accommodate a new flexible commercial unit. This space not only adds to the vitality of this busy high street, but also provides an exciting and characterful space for a new café or restaurant. The original arched entrance bays are infilled with full height door that connect the commercial unit with the bustling high street. The satisfyingly substantial glass and timber doors are sympathetic to the building’s historic fabric allowing natural light to flood the interior and provide an impressing entrance into the space.

The internal spaces of the fire station lend themselves to adaptive re-use but renovation means “to make new again”, so we upgraded its interior to meet contemporary standards to create as much space and light as possible.

We successfully extended the life of this historic building through a series of modernisations that allow it to meet contemporary standards for energy efficiency, and commercial and residential amenity, such as back-of-house, waste management and cycle storage areas. The performance of the building fabric has been improved through additions such as secondary glazing and upgrading existing floor and wall build ups to create comfortable places to live.