Mantle Business Centres is very pleased to announce that The Officers’ Mess Business Centre has won the BCO Refurbished/Recycled Workplace Award in The Midlands/Central England Region. The winners were announced at an Awards Ceremony held at Birmingham Town Hall on 27th April 2017.
Accepting the award on behalf of the team behind the project was Mantle’s Jamie Baker, who says: ‘We are very honored to have won this award. We were delighted to be chosen by the IWM to take on this project, which involved a sensitive restoration of a disused, listed building of historical significance, breathing new life into it by turning it into a vibrant and thriving business centre, whilst preserving and restoring many of its historical features.’
Simon Redman of architectural firm Cowper Griffith says: ‘CGA were delighted to be able to assist Mantle in the delivery of this exciting and characterful new facility. The team has succeeded in combining bright, modern new space with sensitively restored historic fabric and it is gratifying to see this important building buzzing with activity, after many years of disuse. Breathing new life into redundant structures has never been more important and we are as a practice committed to reducing waste and energy use through the creative reuse of existing assets.’
The building sits at the heart of a nationally significant grouping of historic assets – IWM Duxford, the last and best example of a World War Two fighter base.
The Officers’ Mess Business Centre has fostered ongoing connections with veterans and others connected with the historic airfield. Surviving pilots have visited, both during construction and at completion, offering moving recollections of their time on base. The Heart, a vast atrium created within a previously derelict internal courtyard which now forms the hub of the business centre, includes interpretation panels telling the building’s story and keeping its social history alive.
Mantle is a commercial property investment and development group set up in 1990 by CEO, Guy Baker, operating in eastern and south-eastern England. Mantle Business Centres Limited runs Mantle’s portfolio of four business centres, in Stansted, Cambridge, Chelmsford and Duxford, with a fifth centre due to open later this year.
Mantle has plenty of experience working with historic buildings to sympathetically refurbish and create vibrant and financially successful business centres. Mantle’s first business centre was Thremhall Park at Stansted, a former Grade II Franciscan Priory which it acquired in 2004 and reconstructed to provide 23,000 sq.ft. of serviced offices. In 2014, Mantle agreed a 120 year ground lease with Imperial War Museum on The Officers’ Mess at Duxford. It carried out a £2m sympathetic refurbishment to create a new business centre, opening in November 2015.
The British Council for Offices' (BCO) mission is to research, develop and communicate best practice in all aspects of the office sector. It delivers this by providing a forum for the discussion and debate of relevant issues. Established in 1990, the BCO is Britain's leading forum for the discussion and debate of issues affecting the office sector. Its members are all organisations involved in creating, acquiring or occupying office space, whether architects, lawyers, surveyors, financial institutions or public agencies. The BCO works to advance the collective understanding of its members, enabling them to work together to create more effective office space.
One of the BCO's primary objectives is to define excellence in office space. As part of this objective, their annual Awards Programme provides public recognition for top quality design and functionality and a benchmark for excellence in workplaces. Established in 1992, the Programme acknowledges innovation and focuses external attention on examples of best practice.
For further information about any of the information in this press release, please contact:
Jo Hart, Business Development Manager, Mantle Business Centres
T: 01279 215 521
E: jo@mantle.co.uk
Useful links:
mantle.co.uk
cowpergriffith.co.uk
bco.org.uk
Image courtesy of SiRAstudio
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