Glasgow-based O’DonnellBrown wins Retrofit of the Year for Glasgow ‘defurb’

The practice won the highly-coveted accolade for its New Olympia House project in the studio’s home city of Glasgow. The sensitive £1.7 million scheme has transformed a former Salvation Army Citadel in Bridgerton into 280m² of commercial office space, announced onto the streetscape by a sculptural metal entrance tower.

The AJ’s editorial team said the overhaul ticked all the boxes of what a good adaptive reuse should be – making careful interventions, while improving the sustainability and lifespan of a building – but above all, creating something special for the community.

The scheme, for urban regeneration company Clyde Gateway Developments, supports up to 20 full-time jobs.

Local practice O’DonnellBrown – founded by Jennifer O’Donnell and Sam Brown in 2013 – landed the job three years ago ahead of 15 rival teams. The landmark East End building was originally built for the Salvation Army and later used as the headquarters of the Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland.

New Olympia House is a two-storey red sandstone building within the Bridgeton Cross Conservation Area. The internal spaces have been approached with a ‘defurb’ (decluttering while refurbishing) strategy, exposing brickwork, roof trusses and existing timber linings, while improving the building’s energy performance with new insulation throughout, air source heat pump technology and underfloor heating.

This new airy attractive workspace works both at the scale of its users but also at the scale of the surrounding city. Its sculptural metal entrance tower exemplifies this: creating a bold accessible gateway to the building but also acting as a beacon in the local neighbourhood.

The AJ team thought the project provided a model for how a carefully judged yet bold retrofit and intervention can give a new lease of life to unused inner-city buildings, setting a precedent for how to innovatively fill gaps in the streetscape.

The scheme is an exemplar of how architecture, no matter how big or small, can reinforce and recreate community spirit while on a budget.

Project backer Clyde Gateway, is Scotland’s largest regeneration company – a partnership between Glasgow City Council, South Lanarkshire Council, Scottish Enterprise and the Scottish Government – and is focused on boosting sustainable regeneration opportunities in the region. In 2022, jmarchitects completed a £2.2 million visitor centre for the company within East Glasgow’s Cuningar Loop park

Clyde Gateway also oversaw redevelopment of the neighbouring Category B-listed Olympia Cinema in 2012 by this year’s Retrofit and Reuse Awards Architect of the Year, Page\Park.