A former commercial building in Vauxhall, south London, is being redeveloped as a landmark Social Justice Centre.

Known as The Foundry, the Centre will provide a highly accessible and energy efficient base for organisations working in social justice and human rights.

Designed by London architects 00:/ for Ethical Property, the building will be home for up to 40 organisations, providing flexible office facilities, a conference hall, meeting rooms, cafeteria and exhibition space. The works include extensive refurbishment of the original three-storey building, and a newbuild extension involving the use of exposed concrete structure. This acts as a heat sink for the building and will achieve a BREEAM ‘Very Good’ rating.

The ground floor entrance space and frontage has been designed as a highly transparent glazed front facade with a continuous external canopy structure. The prevention of thermal bridging at the various connectivity points was an important early consideration and the Isokorb type K thermal break from Schöck has been incorporated to solve the problem. It not only provides an efficient thermal break between the varied connection profile and the concrete structure, but also transfers bending moment, stress and shear forces and reduces thermal losses to a minimum by virtue of its innovative technology (HTE module compression bearings).

The extensive Schöck Isokorb range allows connections to be made between concrete-to-concrete, concrete-to-steel and steel-to-steel – with one of the modular connection types even allowing the retro-fitting of balconies in certain situations. The Isokorb range also provides BBA Certification, LABC Registration and it comfortably exceeds the requirements of BRE IP1/06 and Part L of the Building Regulations where the temperature factor used to indicate condensation risk (fRSI), must be greater than, or equal to, 0.50 for commercial buildings. A stipulation comfortably exceeded by incorporating the Schöck product into the design.