Breathing ‘life’ into historic walls: repurposing London’s Victoria House for science
January 6, 2025
Sentimentality versus practicality – it can be challenging to balance the two. As humans, we tend to form deep, emotional connections with the things we familiarize ourselves with, making it unintuitive at times to see beyond their original intended purpose.
Oxford Properties and Pioneer Group’s announcement to transform the historic Victoria House, located in the heart of London, England, into a life sciences lab is a beautiful example of striking the right balance between the preservation of a sentimental neo-classical façade structure while retooling it for a greater societal need. This concept is called adaptive reuse – repurposing buildings that have outlived their original use for another while retaining historical value.
Victoria House was originally built and occupied as the head office of the Liverpool Victoria Friendly Society and has since been substantially remodeled for large amounts of office and leisure space. Classified as a Grade-II building in the U.K., every effort is warranted to preserve its architectural and historical interests, making it subject to regulations that restrict any kind of alterations, extensions and demolitions without special permission from various levels of government.
In London, concerns have escalated over the shortage of commercially available lab space. The unique idea to turn Victoria House from office space into a 300,000 sq ft Grade A state-of-the-art life sciences hub, solves for this. Its first phase is scheduled for completion this month, with the landmark close to some of London’s world-renowned universities, hospitals and medical research centres.
Adaptive reuse also plays a key role in sustainable design and construction – conserving resources and reducing waste associated with demolition and new construction. Designed to achieve high sustainability standards, this project is not only historically significant and functional, but energy efficient and environmentally responsible.
The Victoria House conversion takes future developments to a new level. Seeing beyond the confines of physical structures we have cherished over the years allows us to infuse them with new life that serves a greater purpose. This project is a testament to balancing sentimentality with practicality – we can in fact conserve the old for a meaningful new through reframing purpose.
Learn more about Victoria House’s repurposing via an interview with Oxford Properties’ Abby Shapiro, Senior Vice President, Europe, here.