Bastion House and the Museum of London

Noriyuki Ishii, Diploma II, Royal College of Art, 2023

Tutors: Matthew Blunderfield & Andrea Zanderigo

As Existing

Existing Conditions

The project proposes to reuse Bastion House, a recently vacant office tower, and the former Museum of London below. The buildings were designed by Powell & Moya and built in 1976. The site is situated on the southern corner of the Barbican Estate, surrounding the Ironmonger’s Hall and adjacent to medieval bastions that once formed the city wall.

The tower is a generic stack of thirteen typical floors and the museum is a pedestal highly specific to the complexities of the plot, negotiating multiple level changes. They form two distinct elements of the same building, both with a concrete structure. The site is owned by the City of London Corporation, who plan to demolish everything and build an enormous quantity of speculative office in steel and glass; disregarding their own whole life carbon assessment which shows new-build always emits significantly more than renovation. The project proposes to meet a planetary brief (the City’s own carbon targets). To achieve this, reuse is necessary and likely much cheaper to construct.

Proposed Plans

The building, deemed unable to meet current office ideals whilst vacancy is higher than ever, requires an alternative, higher value programme, in the form of a more generous version of ‘co-living’. The tower houses dormitory dwellings for single occupants with adaptable co-housing apartments in the former museum for various family arrangements alongside collective uses including working spaces, daycare, sauna and canteen.

Room (Summer and Winter) – Easily movable furniture encourages temporal arrangements of living space that might change throughout the seasons.

Stove – Questioning inherited standards of efficiency and domesticity. A stove redesigned for use by more than one person, becoming also a place to gather around.

Spot Heating – Insulating curtains enclose parts of the living spaces around heated spots in the floor, conserving heat in a smaller area.

Bastion House – Prioritising simple climatic instruments easily adjusted by inhabitants. The mid-scale is ultimately about allowing people to control their own comfort.

Expanding the sealed envelope, letting the weather back in. The existing facade material is removed, refurbished and reassembled to form the new envelope. Existing concrete structure is exposed to use its thermal mass to regulate temperature.

Proposed transformations aim to reintroduce a ‘mid-scale’ between body and building to mediate climatic conditions using furniture, opening windows, external shading, vegetation. This is nothing new...

Open Air – The project tries to depart from the sacrifice often associated with sustainability, instead making changes that could lead towards alternative, more thrilling ways of living, one that is closer to the joys of climate.

The central courtyard is rediscovered as a planted garden, letting in daylight and organising the building.

Logistics – Last mile delivery infrastructure occupies the lower ground floor, adding more economic value by simply appropriating the existing service road.