Environmental Choreography of a mixed-use building: Optimising spatial zoning, events and transitions to enhance occupant’s health and wellbeing in the context of adaptive reuse

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Environmental Choreography of a mixed-use building: Optimising spatial zoning, events and transitions to enhance occupant’s health and wellbeing in the context of adaptive reuse

Posted 03.03.2026

Context

As societal and economic demands evolve, the need for urban renewal remains ever present. Awareness surrounding the embodied carbon impact of demolition and new construction has renewed focus on reusing existing building stock, adapting it for new functions and extending its life. This is where adaptive reuse comes in. The question of retrofit vs new-build is, however, nuanced. While retrofitting can significantly reduce embodied carbon emissions, highly environmentally optimised new-builds often yield lower operational energy. Existing massing often limits passive design strategies while compliance can require thick insulation that reduces useable floor area, raising concerns over resource efficiency and economic viability. Nonetheless, these measures may face operational carbon penalties in the long-term. These challenges are compounded by the conflict between Part L’s overprovision of insulation and airtightness on summer overheating risks addressed by Part O in the UK.

Mixed-use builds present an opportunity to address retrofit viability concerns across environmental and economic dimensions, when approached from an occupant-centric perspective. With an estimated 80–90% of people’s time spent indoors, there is a clear imperative to promote occupant health, comfort and productivity. This study challenges the code-driven blanket Part L compliance, which does not inherently improve comfort, and proposes the Environmental Choreography Framework: an occupant-centric, performance-based approach. By layering insulation through integrating transition spaces with supplementary uses such as winter gardens and galleries, the study demonstrates how gradual environmental transitions enhance comfort, maintain resource efficiency, and support sustainable urban growth.

Framework and methodology

The framework begins with understanding the existing building and establishing performance baselines. The Grade II-listed Haggerston Baths and Hoxton Docks in East London served as the case study to validate the approach. Site-specific data informed shoebox models to capture heating and cooling loads, daylighting, and comfort metrics. These were iteratively tested through energy, daylight and comfort simulations against a structured framework:

Baseline shoebox modelling → targeted interventions → massing and spatial choreography → transition-zone sequencing with PET-gradient interventions.

The concept of Environmental Choreography underpins this sequence. Leveraging the distinct IEQ requirements of diverse functions, they can be strategically zoned with targeted retrofit to achieve occupant comfort where needed. The positioning and sequencing of zones curate an intentional flow of environmental experiences the occupant encounters as they move through the building. Physiological Equivalent Temperature (PET) modelling evaluated comfort, maintaining a maximum 3°C differential between zones to minimise physiological stress. Buildings act like a stage, with occupants’ journeys choreographed through transition spaces that increase in intervention, enabling gradual acclimation between exterior conditions and core zones.

The Antivilla project in Berlin, Germany provides a notable precedent, for which this study resolves the issue of underutilised floor space by introducing transition zones of supplementary uses. Winter gardens and galleries were created as semi-conditioned spaces, transforming residual areas into economically viable spaces that enrich the while resolving environmental challenges.

By framing retrofit this way, the methodology offers projects a tool to zone and layer spaces that avoid sudden environmental shifts, reducing physiological stress and discomfort while enhancing energy performance and occupant wellbeing.

Key findings

Balancing and integrating technical conclusions from the shoebox analysis with the project brief, structural appraisals and heritage constraints helped to establish spatial orders and sequences of occupant experiences. Massing proposals were evaluated to reconcile environmental performance with architectural intent.

Baseline assessments revealed the gym as the most energy-intensive space with annual heating and cooling demands reaching 450 kWh/m². After targeted interventions, including airtightness, insulation, and solar-controlled glazing with side fins, this was reduced to 197 kWh/m². Importantly, retaining daylight provision for the occupant experience — conventionally compromised in practice — the guidance 18.0°C cooling set-point was re-appraised. Conditions fell outside the comfort range of the gym users as the low set-point inhibited evaporation, the primary heat-loss mechanism during exercise. Returning to first principles — the parameters of PET — an enhanced air velocity (1.0 m/s) enabled comfort ranges to be met at 21.7°C. This yielded a 62% annual energy reduction, enabling extended periods viable for natural ventilation, achieving 96% savings relative to conventional set-points. Beyond the energy saving and improved thermal comfort, allowing warm light to suffuse the space enlivened its architectural character and occupant wellbeing, reaffirming the harmony between environmental performance and spatial quality.

Influence of air velocities on gym cooling operative temperature set-points to limit PET to a maximum 23.0°C for conditions RH=60% MET=3.5 clo=0.3

Influence of operative cooling set-point temperature on total cooling demand in the gym

The sequencing of transition zones reinforced performance. Redirecting access into the Pool Hall created an environmentally choreographed journey through the lobby, gallery and changing rooms. Minimal modifications in the lobby, and in the gallery improving airtightness from 25 to 15 m³/hr/m² at 50 Pa, replacing windows, targeted insulation, and controlled natural ventilation ensured an optimal thermal gradient. These yielded energy savings exceeding 21% in winter and 5% in summer.

A new colonnade connected the development, functioning as both thermal buffer and public social space. By mediating indoor–outdoor temperature differences, the colonnade delivered over 35% winter and 15% summer energy savings. Leveraging latent heat from the Pool Hall and introducing a glazed courtyard enabled the colonnade to remain open through winter extremes. By design, asymmetrical vaults and framed views slow occupant cadence, encouraging the public to pause and engage in dialogue, facilitating thermal acclimation, and reducing the performance gap.

Zonal plan drawing of thermal gradients across the transition spaces

Internal colonnade view

Integrated axonometric sectional drawing

Industry application

Environmental Choreography offers a replicable framework for mixed-use retrofit, demonstrating how targeted interventions can strengthen viability and enhance occupant wellbeing. Thoughtful spatial sequencing proves as critical as technical precision, enabling architectural solutions that improve environmental performance while enriching sensory and social experience.

By moving away from building-wide Part L compliance, the framework identifies where interventions provide genuine value. Core zones receive fabric-first upgrades, while transition spaces moderate environmental conditions and maintain comfort naturally. These spaces function not merely as circulation but as social and cultural nodes: winter gardens, lobbies, galleries and colonnades that extend programme and encourage interaction, transforming thermal buffers into places of exchange and rest. PET-based analysis ensures a 3°C temperature gradient threshold, reducing physiological stress and supporting thermal and visual comfort without compromising energy efficiency.

For practice, the framework is especially valuable at early design stages, where zoning and sequencing shape performance and user experience. It complements existing sustainability tools by aligning environmental metrics with the realities of human comfort and behaviour. Designing from an occupant-centred perspective enables more innovative solutions and moves beyond rigid regulatory compliance toward meaningful comfort outcomes.

More broadly, Environmental Choreography provides a resource-efficient and economically viable path for adaptive reuse, offering an energy-conscious alternative particularly suited to listed buildings exempt from modern regulations and supporting sustainable urban renewal.

Hagi was an MEng Engineering and Architectural Design student at The Bartlett UCL. This blog forms part of his thesis sponsored by and completed while at Make, and written under the mentorship of Oliver Hall, Head of Sustainability and Innovation, and Valerio D’Angelantonio, Sustainable Design Coordinator. Read the full dissertation here.