Bureau de Change enlivens Trace apartment block with pink waste-based panels

Architecture studio Bureau de Change has updated a 1980s apartment block in London, revitalising its facade with pink concrete panels made from demolition waste.

Named Trace, the building in Euston was revamped for developer HGG to provide five apartments across its six storeys, which include two floors added as part of the project.

Bureau de Change sought to reuse as much of the existing structure as possible, retaining the building's original foundations and primary structure, and using bricks from its original facade to create a new frontage of glass-reinforced concrete panels.

"The existing building was clad with '80s red brick, so we felt that retaining a reference to that would be fitting for the new building," studio co-founder Billy Mavropoulos told Dezeen.

"We collected the facade demolition material – brick and mortar – and we crushed it down to a maximum six-millimetre-thick aggregate," Mavropoulos added.

"That was then reconstituted in the new panels we cast for the new facade."

The concrete panels, which were hand-cast individually, are organised across the exterior in a gridded pattern that ranges from a reddish to pale pink shade.

They are set off by dark-framed, arched windows at each level and a matching top-floor extension.

A shared entrance, updated with a similarly arched form and concrete-clad frame, sits beside the large archway at ground level and opens up to a circulation core.

"The glass-reinforced concrete panels are unique on each level and each one of them consists of various colour and aggregate density layers," Mavropoulos explained.

Inside, the block contains three two-bedroom apartments on the first, second and third floors, while two one-bedroom apartments occupy the newly added fourth and fifth floors.

Each of the apartments gains daylight from large openings on both facades, with terraces on the building's top floor.

The interiors feature bespoke designs by London-based studios Jan Hendzel Studio, Sedilia and A Rum Fellow.

Other projects recently completed by the studio include a yellow-brick extension to a Victorian house in Fulham.

Also in London, EBBA Architects founder Benni Allan recently used timber to renovate his own apartment in a former tea factory and Uncanny Studio revamped a 1930s penthouse to create a flow between its rooms.

The photography is by Gilbert McCarragher.

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