‘Grade II’-Listed Powerhouse Dramatically Restored as ‘Grade A’ Office

Just before the pandemic, a private real estate investment firm snatched up one of the last and most historically significant buildings along Bristol’s Floating Harbour. In that nook, dubbed Finzels Reach, the 1899-built Generator Building was crucial among the brick dynamos that powered Britain’s industrial revolution, literally generating energy to run the United Kingdom’s first electric tramway.

Finzels Reach is now abuzz with new energy, though of the less literal variety, as its heritage factories are rehabilitated in swathes to revitalise the antiquated industrial site into a cool, contemporary core of the city where new generations want to live and work. And the former Generator now plays a part in a very modern revolution: the shift to flexible office space.

Castleforge Partners saw the Generator nestled along the waterway amid glossy offices and sleek condos and began envisioning how the grand, red-brick powerhouse might remain a resolute reminder of Bristol’s past while subtly stepping into the city’s future.

The London-based real estate group purchased the six-storey, 36,000-square-foot, Grade II*-listed building from a local developer, Cubex Land, for 5 million pounds (then US$6.3 million) in May 2019 – with the sole purpose of bringing to Bristol a new branch of its on-demand serviced offices concept, Clockwise.

To realise this transformation, Castleforge had to enlist a visionary design team. It found such a partner in MoreySmith, a London-based architecture practice that won a competitive bid and then held its own in discussions about what and how much to change.

Now a Grade A office, the Generator still looks much like it did at the end of the 19th century. The panes within its cathedral-like arched frames were replaced for more pristine views of the river; its red ashlar façade was restored to its most robust; and its grandest Venetian window now serves as the building’s main entrance, beckoning visitors in from the street through glass doorways.

But MoreySmith, along with base builder Bush Consultancy, had much to do to regenerate the relic. Abandoned since the 1980s, when it was last used as an office building after being taken out of service during World War II when a bomb disabled the city’s tramways, the once-opulent Generator was just a dusty shell of its former glory by the time it was toured by the designers.

Falcons nested in the rafters. Pigeons domineered the top floor. Office floorplates installed in the 1980s disrupted the lofty, airy vibe that Castleforge sought. Wall stencils denoting the locations of original machinery barely peeked out from under more than 100 years of scum.

Moreover, Historic England had a large say in what could and couldn’t be done to the building. Registered as one of three tiered classes of historically significant buildings to which only approved alterations can be made, the Generator is listed as Grade II* – making it one of only 6% of buildings that hold “particularly important status … of more than special interest.”

“We were to hold on to as much of the original fabric of the building as we could,” explained MoreySmith associate designer Zoe Bailey.

For interiors, Bailey’s team focused on three themes for the material palette, all concepts from the building’s original use: electricity, industrial and waterways. Any interventions followed these basic themes as “fun nods” to the Generator’s distant past without being “too on the nose”, she told LoopNet.

Inside the building, the external walls, lined with “light, bright and kind of reflective, off-white glazed Victorian tiles” served as a backdrop for the whole project, she added. When new colours and materials were integrated, they mimicked some of the raw concrete, steel and rusted beams found throughout the property. Aged copper cladding, for example, references the rust. Modern additions, such as repurposed marble terrazzo flooring, smooth out the balance between old and new features of the space. But the industrial aesthetic reigns supreme.

The electricity motif was easy, Bailey continued. “Unlike a new building, where everything’s hidden”, she said, the open, loft-like mezzanines and double-height nature of the spaces didn’t allow for neat tuckaways of mechanical and electrical components. “But imagine how many wires there would have been running through the building when it was being used as a power generating station. We had to remind the client not to worry if you can see a conduit here and there; just celebrate it.”

The bar on the first floor is illuminated by a custom lighting installation made of prismatic acrylic, which the team said was “inspired by the flow of electricity”.

“There was nothing about the building that made it a warm, comfortable space for people to work in,” she said. So, maximising the workspace area’s access to its existing lighting became key. The natural light beaming through the cathedral windows was essential in renewing the space, and reflections from the waterway below added to the organic, soothing elements reaching from outside in. Those features, coupled with original cobalt blue tiles around windows and new design choices such as reclaimed rope that the team used in ambient lighting setups, all contributed to the nautical theme.

By keeping design interventions minimal and respectful of the Generator legacy, Bailey said MoreySmith slowly earned Historic England’s trust. When the time came to select furniture and finishes, which did contribute to making the space comfortable, the governing body mostly obliged, knowing the team “had the best for the building in mind”.

Historic England did balk at some of the proposed interventions to the structure of the space, Bailey explained. “On the mezzanine levels, we couldn’t use a balustrade that would block views in or out”, for example, she said. “They had a lot to say about trusses and other original architecture features that had to be on show on every level. You could only touch certain parts of the building. You couldn't actually change the fabric of the building at all.”

In order to break up volumes of space, workspace partitions such as pod-like elements had to be offset from some of the structural elements, reducing the amount of usable space. This became a puzzle to solve with the client, Bailey explained, because they wanted to maximise space available for coworking desks. The floors are grouped in twos, she continued, with double-height pairings thanks to a mezzanine on each level.

Castleforge initially thought about extending the mezzanine to the external walls, but both Historic England and the design team pushed to keep a volume of space open to allow more of the natural light from the cathedral windows to flood the vaulted areas, further cutting into Clockwise’s useable space.

“There's a certain quota they need to meet for how many single, dedicated desks to fit in and all these different requirements that they had,” Bailey continued. “But we just had to push that actually we need to celebrate the architecture as well, and that comes first.”

Another sacrifice of space came in the form of MoreySmith’s recommendation that the ground floor be semi-open to the public, Bailey explained. “You walk in the main door, and you've got this big atrium space with the tea point on the first floor, and you can see straight in and see that central, feature bar with the halo around it.” Though that café, bar and event space in the lobby was initially programmed as a Clockwise lounge area, MoreySmith suggested it be accessible to all. “People in the area really admire this building. They should be able to enjoy it to some capacity.”

Meanwhile, Clockwise members have a dedicated private entrance in the back, where they can go straight to the lift. “They've got a really lovely entrance with an industrial-like, old school postal locker system, with a mixture of corrugated metals and Nordic copper, which is this really lovely, bronzy tone.”

Bailey’s recommended approach to a delicate undertaking of such a massively significant space was to not be “overly obsessed”.

“With a such an old building, you have to understand that there are going to be things that just look a little bit different to what you imagined they would,” she said.