Eurobrick at the Imperial War Museum

Parkside is a new 1,500m² building designed and built as a collaborative and creative space for Imperial War Museums’ staff in Southwark, London. The three-storey building provides a flexible workspace for 180 staff with formal and informal meeting areas, a café and breakout spaces.

Parkside is designed to support IWM in fulfilling its vital mission to improve public understanding of war and conflict through its exhibitions, events and programming. The new space will also support IWM’s commitment to develop smarter working practices across the whole organization.

Architects Jestico + Whiles developed IWM’s vision into a striking design and Reds10, delivered the building using the latest off-site construction techniques.

Eurobrick has over 30 years’ experience working with off-site construction companies to provide a flexible, real brick finish that allows for some creativity in the finished design. They offer brick and stone slip systems to suit any project and supplied their popular P-Clad system for the IWM project, having worked with Reds10 on a number of projects already.

Approximately 890m² of the P-Clad system was supplied, along with Wienerberger Marziale bricks which were specially ordered and cut. Marziale is a brick with bright buff tones and distressed features that give it a weathered, traditional look. Eurobrick supplied whole Marziale bricks for the construction of a boundary wall, along with specially cut brick slips, headers and corners.

The design of the brickwork was technically challenging, with a mixture of vertical and horizontal stretcher bond and bespoke brick soffits and sills, which Eurobrick also supplied. The recessed bays were laid in vertical stretcher bond with alternating thicknesses of brick slips to create a relief effect in the brick courses. The narrow brickwork columns between the windows were detailed with corner bricks returns into the reveals. The columns were laid in horizontal stretcher bond, with bespoke vertical stretcher bond window heads and soffits and bespoke vertical stretcher bond angled sills.

It was a challenging layout and one of Eurobrick’s most experienced approved installers, Façade Install, fitted all of the brick cladding. Some of the brick slip installation was completed in the factory and some in-situ, once the modular building had been delivered to site. Using P-Clad helped this complex design become a reality and assisted with successful project delivery. Eurobrick’s systems are adaptable and ideal for the demands of contemporary modular architecture.

“The IWM project used brick slips as the external finish throughout but incorporated a number of challenging details. Eurobrick helped develop and deliver solutions to enable these details to be constructed. Reds10, the architects and client are delighted with the new facility. We have worked with Eurobrick on a number of projects and found them very helpful and responsive, providing excellent service.” Reds10

The project brought together offsite and traditional construction techniques to deliver a complex modular build, with difficult site conditions in Central London. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the project was successfully completed in 2020. The end result is an impressive building with a level of detail that proves the versatility of P-Clad perfectly.

For more information on Eurobrick systems and products, please visit www.eurobrick.co.uk or call 0117 971 7117.