Many building professionals are familiar with the unofficial “Rubble Club”, when a building you helped design is demolished within your own professional lifetime. The opposite club is smaller – call it the “Retro Club”. Membership is reserved for those fortunate enough to return to a building they designed decades earlier and find it still has life in it. Aurora, on Bothwell Street in Glasgow, earned Woolgar Hunter a place in that club.
Originally completed in 2004 for developer CEG, Aurora was designed by Cooper Cromar Architects with Woolgar Hunter handling the civil and structural engineering. At the time it made a statement. Glasgow’s commercial core was changing, beginning to embrace a new generation of contemporary office buildings. With its sweeping concave glass façade curving along Bothwell Street, Aurora arrived with a modern confidence in a city characterised by masonry.
Behind the architecture sat a surprisingly complex piece of engineering. The site occupies the northern slope of Blythswood Hill, one of the glacial drumlins that define Glasgow’s topography. The structure descends deep into the hillside through multiple basement levels, formed within contiguous piled retaining walls and supported by transfer structures reconciling the office floorplates above with basement parking below. Long-span composite steel floors create flexible, column-free accommodation while cantilever structures support the curved façade. The excavation required temporary works and long-span propping within a constrained city-centre site.
Twenty Years of Quiet Service
Aurora became part of the fabric of the city, performing exactly as intended. Occupiers came and went, businesses grew, and the building quietly did its job.
Twenty years later it remained successful and commercially relevant. But the world around it had changed. Offices were no longer simply places where people sat at desks. The pandemic accelerated a shift already underway: workplaces became destinations, competing with home working, demanding greater emphasis on wellbeing, collaboration and experience.
When Forma acquired the building and embarked on its repositioning, supported by HFD Group in a development management role, the question was not whether Aurora should survive but how it should evolve.
Better, Not Bigger
Working alongside TP Bennett Architects, numerous possibilities were explored, with a view to increasing useable space, but analysis revealed the building was already remarkably efficient. Detailed review of the existing structure revealed very little redundancy. The engineers of 2002 had extracted maximum value from the steel frame, floorplates and foundations. There was little spare capacity because there was very little wasted material.
The final intervention became an exercise in enhancement rather than expansion. A reimagined arrival sequence transformed the entrance experience. New stairs, mezzanine spaces and social areas introduced movement and visual connection to the lower floors. At roof level, a new terrace turned what had largely been plant and maintenance access into one of the building’s most valuable assets. Now it provides views across Glasgow, outdoor workspace, planting and social areas that would have been unimaginable when the building was first conceived.
The Discipline of Working with What Exists
For engineers, weaving new interventions into an existing structural framework can be more demanding than new-build design. Existing structures rarely align perfectly with contemporary aspirations. Every new opening, stair, terrace and support must be carefully coordinated with what already exists. Every intervention is an act of surgery rather than replacement.
It also offered a rare opportunity to reopen calculations made twenty years earlier and test the original design against the passage of time. The conclusion was reassuring: the building had aged well, and crucially, the original design proved highly adaptable, able to change with the times without demolition or waste.
The Carbon Case for Keeping Buildings
Sustainability discussions tend to focus on operational performance: renewable technologies, smart controls, embodied carbon calculations. These matter, of course, but Aurora makes a more fundamental point. Before any conversation about heat pumps or environmental certifications, the project made its most important decision: it retained the building. The foundations, basements, steel frame, floor slabs and much of the façade all remained in service. The overwhelming majority of the embodied carbon already invested in the building was preserved rather than demolished and replaced.
Only then did the project turn to operational performance. The refurbished Aurora operates as an all-electric building targeting Net Zero Carbon in Operation. New building services and intelligent controls significantly reduce operational demand. Extensive cycle facilities encourage low-carbon commuting. Living walls introduce biodiversity into the workplace, while the roof terrace reconnects occupants with the city around them.
Notably, the decisions that reduced carbon also improved tenant experience. The interventions that enhanced wellbeing increased the building’s attractiveness. Sustainability and commercial value, so often framed as competing priorities, turned out to be the same thing.
A Building That Earns Its Age
Twenty years ago, Cooper Cromar, CEG and Woolgar Hunter created a building capable of evolving beyond the assumptions of its time. Forma’s stewardship, HFD’s development leadership and the wider design team’s careful refurbishment have extended that life once again.
The resulting development is a building that has earned the right to grow old.
We look forward to seeing what it has to say in 2050.