We light up Northcliffe House, one of London's greenest buildings

In London, the redevelopment of the former Daily Mail headquarters, Northcliffe House, has been completed. Today, the site is a modern office building that has retained its historic features thanks to a sensitively executed design. Our company Halla, a.s. played a significant role in the renovation, supplying around 5,000 luminaires. Thanks to us, Northcliffe House has also met the requirements of the Royal Institute of British Architects and received a prestigious accreditation demonstrating its superior sustainability credentials.

John Robertson Architects recently completed the Northcliffe House project, which involved the redevelopment of the former headquarters and printing plant of the Daily Mail in London. The building on Tudor Street, which was used as an industrial printing plant until the late 1980s, was renovated to provide 26,200 sqm of modern office space over seven floors, while retaining its unique heritage features such as the building's art deco fa?ade.

The renovation of the offices in the historic building combined the old with the new, and the project also had high ambitions for its sustainability. During the renovation of the building, among other things, the top two floors of the building were extended, increasing its total area by 1,150 m2, this enabled the modern building to be complemented by several terraces and urban greenery. The architects also thought about the employees commuting to the offices and created facilities for them, including changing areas, 345 places for cyclists and electric bike chargers.

Halla, a.s. took on the task of lighting the entire building, which involved around 5,000 luminaires that had to meet strict technical parameters.

"The project required increased control of all preparatory, logistical and production processes. The client had many discussions with our production site in Nové Město nad Metují to ensure the correct production process, the perfect condition to manufacture the luminaires, as well as the specially adapted packaging for transport. Thanks to this, it was possible to achieve that out of so many thousands of luminaires, only 12 were defective, and in all cases these were defects caused by transport or handling during installation of the luminaires," described Mark Russell, Managing Director Halla – UK.

Around 4,000 Lina80 luminaires now serve as the main office lighting in Northcliffe House, equivalent to more than six kilometres of luminaires that had to be specially adapted for installation in the metal ceiling.

"The precision of this connection and the visual clarity of the transition between the ceiling and the luminaires were our main aesthetic elements when selecting the lights. In addition, due to the extremely high sustainability requirements of the entire building, it was necessary to develop a new body for the profile and optical system for the luminaires with a view to lower glare and lower energy consumption - not only during operation, but also in terms of the materials used. In the end, we achieved a roughly 40% saving in the amount of recycled aluminium used for the luminaires," added Mark Russell.

Linear luminaires in other areas are complemented by Rundo62 circular luminaires and built-in or suspended downlights Ture and Ravo. The possibility of dimming the luminaires individually and connecting them to the central building control system is already an obvious feature, which brings additional operational savings with regard to the movement and number of people in the building.

Thanks to our cooperation, the modernisation of the London building was therefore carried out in accordance with strict environmental criteria. The refurbished building met the conditions set by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) in the 2030 Climate Challenge, which requires all new and retrofitted buildings to achieve a zero carbon footprint over their entire lifetime. In addition, by retaining the structure and fa?ade of the building, whilst reconfiguring the refurbishment, maximum carbon reduction was achieved and the highly sustainable BREEAM Outstanding and WELL Enabled accreditations were achieved. Such a rating as Northcliffe House is now achieved by less than 1% of all projects in the UK.

Northcliffe has been awarded the Commendation of Architecture in the prestigious AIA International 2023 Design Awards. ??

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