Turns out saving a brutalist icon from the wrecking ball pays off. Space House has been named Sustainable Renovation of the Year at the 2025 Dezeen Awards, one of the biggest stamps of approval in architecture and design, and a very nice trophy to have on the shelf.

The retrofit kept a full 90% of the original 1968 structure, designed by Richard Seifert and Partners back when Space House was a symbol of the era's commercial property boom. Rather than knock it down and start again, the team stripped away decades of unsympathetic additions, restored Seifert's crisp rooftop silhouette with two new floors, and turned the whole thing into 255,000 square feet of workspace fit for right now. The number that really lands: retaining the structure instead of rebuilding saved an estimated 10,000 tonnes of carbon.

The judges put it best:

"At a time when many UK modernist buildings are demolished, Space House proves maintaining these structures needn't sacrifice liveability or efficiency... [The] transformational work prioritised sensitivity over ego."

Grade II-listed doesn't have to mean frozen in time. Space House shows a brutalist landmark can be sustainable, liveable, and genuinely enjoyable to work in all without losing what made it special in the first place. Award-winning, and still just getting started.