At One Central Argyle Street, JP Morgan Chase sought to build a modern, tech-forward home for its European Technology Centre, bringing together its 2,700 Glasgow employees in one state-of-the-art building. The site was perfectly located, at the heart of Glasgow’s International Financial Services District and a stone’s throw from Central Station.
The only problem? The centrally located, easily accessible site sat adjacent to one of Scotland’s busiest transport corridors.
There are some projects where the engineering is immediately visible. Whilst large trusses, dramatic cantilevers and exposed steelwork are an integral part of the architecture itself, the most interesting engineering elements at One Central lie behind them.
The success of the engineering at One Central lay in what people couldn’t see, hear or feel. There could be no vibration through the floor plates from the railway below, no subtle movement in meeting rooms or offices that might undermine concentration. As Glasgow’s commuters rattled by underfoot, the building had to feel entirely calm.
A City Built in Layers
Argyle Street represents Glasgow exactly as it evolved: incrementally and imperfectly over time. Beneath the surface lie generations of accumulated infrastructure: Victorian retaining walls, rail infrastructure, redundant services, historic foundations, drainage diversions and utilities crossing utilities. Every intervention into the ground reveals another fragment of the city’s history.
One Central sat directly within that context. The site was physically constrained and operationally demanding. The railway immediately beneath the road remained live throughout the works, and the development had to coexist with the infrastructure around it. This required extensive careful cooperation with Network Rail and shaped the structural strategy fundamentally.
Designing for Performance
Modern commercial buildings demand performance well beyond keeping the structure standing. Occupiers expect environments that feel stable, comfortable and acoustically controlled. A floor can be structurally sound and still fail. If people perceive low-frequency vibration, the quality of the environment drops immediately.
Here, the proximity of the railway demanded a comprehensive vibration mitigation strategy. We undertook extensive vibration modelling, developing isolation systems and utilising springs beneath foundations and columns to separate the building from the movement generated below. These sprung elements effectively filter and dissipate the energy before it reaches the occupied areas. Explaining this to people outside the industry always produced slightly confused looks. More than once, we had to clarify that no, JP Morgan Chase’s new Glasgow home was not going to bounce like floor of the Barrowland Ballroom.
The movement involved was microscopic and precisely engineered. The building became a buffer between the railway below and the workplace above. Getting there required close coordination across structural engineers, geotechnical specialists, acoustic consultants, architects, contractors, Network Rail and specialist manufacturers. Every decision had consequences: structural stiffness affected vibration performance, construction sequencing affected tolerances, service penetrations affected acoustic detailing.
More Than Structure
The feature stair in the lobby of One Central did more than move people between floors. Threaded through the workspace as a sculptural element, it encouraged visibility and interaction between teams in a way lifts never do. People pause on landings, fall into conversations, drift into impromptu meetings. Circulation became social rather than purely functional, with the structural elements shaping the way people utilise the building.
In a way this spoke to the whole engineering strategy: while below in the foundations the structure worked to prevent any movement, here the structure worked to encourage movement around the space. At each point in the building the structure is working differently to maximise the benefit to those inhabiting it.
Engineering the Unseen
Visitors see the finished façade, reception and commercial interiors. The systems beneath the finishes — the layers of isolation that make the building function comfortably in such a demanding environment — are hidden entirely. Good engineering usually is. If the building performs as intended, occupants will never spare a thought for the railway running alongside them.
One Central Argyle Street sits within a broader pattern of Glasgow’s reinvention. Over two decades the city has transformed significantly, former industrial areas steadily becoming commercial and mixed-use districts. Glasgow tends not to start from scratch. It repurposes, adapts, builds on what’s already there, which demands a particular kind of engineering: pragmatic, collaborative and responsive.
JP Morgan Chase’s site straddles two sides of the city’s financial district, the noise rush of countless commuters arriving in the city and the calm, controlled offices technology empowered offices where people do industry leading work. The engineering elements of this building allow those two worlds to sit beside one another, working in harmony, while staying out of sight.
And no, it doesn’t bounce.