Traditional modes of urban development within industrial zones of the city overwhelmingly involve mass demolition and material displacement of existing building stock. The Old Oak / Park Royal industrial district in northwest London is the next in line for this inevitable and carbon-intensive process.


This project proposes a novel development typology called retrofill. Retrofill projects would aim to fuse the methods of infill – small-scale interventions in vacant gaps – and retrofit – improving material and thermal performance of existing buildings – to preserve industrial building stock by preventing demolition and adding value to these zones.


The resolved building design for the retrofill pursued by this project employs a prefabricated tectonic approach consisting of emerging mass timber and glass enveloping technologies. This allows the project to speculate on developing a kit of parts carbon tectonic that forms part of the retrofill programme. An architectural and material methodology that functions systematically across the industrial building stock framework to produce a growing network of these projects in a rapid, low-carbon manner.