The bond had been open to the weather at second floor for the better part of three decades. The brick was sound. Almost nothing else was, and the first structural report recommended demolition in a single sentence and then spent nine pages agreeing with itself.
The second report, which cost more and took longer, found that the north and east walls could carry a new independent frame if the frame did not touch them. That is the building: a new structure standing inside an old envelope, transferring nothing to it, so that the walls are relieved of a job they had stopped being able to do.
The bay rhythm
The elevation is the drawing that matters here. The original openings run in a bay rhythm of 2.4 metres, and every one of them was a loading door, which means every one is wider than a domestic window wants to be and set at a height that suits a barrel rather than a person.
We kept all of them. Not one was infilled, widened, or moved. Each becomes a full-height opening into an apartment, with the glazing set 300mm back into the reveal so the depth of the brick reads from the street. Six apartments, twenty-two openings, and the elevation is legible from the pavement as exactly the warehouse it was.
Not cleaning the brick
The client wanted the brick cleaned. We spent four months on this and lost the argument twice before winning it.
Cleaning would have taken off a hundred and thirty years of soot, weather and one distinct tide line at first floor that records how high the water stood in the years the roof was open. That tide line is the only physical evidence left that this building was ever abandoned. Remove it and the conversion becomes a nicely done set of flats. Keep it and the building can still tell you what happened to it.
The brick was consolidated where it was failing and washed nowhere.
Brass
Ironmongery, switch plates and the stair balustrade are sand-cast brass, unlacquered. It arrived yellow. Eighteen months on, the handles are brown and the balustrade is still mostly gold except where hands reach it, which is a stripe about four hundred millimetres long on every flight. Residents point this out to visitors.