Core and Shell: facciate storiche e nuovi edifici. Il caso dell’ex Chelsea and Fulham Power Station a Londra

Abstract

The maintenance of the façade(s) is one of the most common solutions – in countries where this intervention is allowed – which can also guarantee the “preservation” of the existing built herit- age, as well as the construction of new “zero land consumption buildings”. The English term used to identify this area of work is Façadism. The paper analyses a perfect example attributable to this area of work that is being implement- ed on the former Chelsea and Fulham Power Station in London. The refurbishment project, in the construction phase, was instructed to Midgard Design Service Ltd (Design Department of the Irish construction company JRL Group Limited) which will transform the entire area into a luxurious complex of blocks with apartments, amenities and commercial units. A new ten-floors residential building with a reinforced concrete frame will be built behind the historic facades of the Lots Road power station and connected to them with mechanical connections. The paper is divided into three parts: the first, dedicated to an analysis of the phenomenon of “Façadism”, as a refurbishment option for historic buildings in purely Anglo-Saxon contexts, analyzing their advantages and highlighting the considerations from which derived the analyzed various interventions; the second, which examines the former Lots Road Power Station of Chel- sea and Fulham in London and the project for its recovery; the third, which reports the results of the analysis of an alternative mechanical connection system to the one developed by the multidis- ciplinary consulting firm for engineering design Meinhardt (www.meinhardt.co.uk) – and wanted by the client (Cheung Kong Property Holdings, and Hutchkinson, www.ckh.com.hk)- which will be used for the construction of the new building within the original “shell” of the former Lots Road Power Station.