Thinking Under The Box
A Project By: Urban Edge Architecture
Location: Theale
What if the best way to think outside the box is to start by thinking under it?
In Theale, West Berkshire, the box is a freezer warehouse. The thinking happens underneath it, in the space between the building and the ground it stands over. The site sits within a floodplain, so rather than reduce the developable area to work around the water, our team raised the warehouse above it. Floodwater passes beneath the building; storage capacity sits above. A freezer on stilts sounds like an unlikely architectural response, but it became the key to unlocking the site’s hidden potential – a challenge familiar across the built environment.
What if the future of sustainable development is not always about building something new, but about reimagining what already exists?
As pressure grows to reduce waste, minimise embodied carbon and make better use of existing resources, the question is no longer simply what should we build next? but what can we transform? At Arlington Business Park in Theale, our team turned a vacant former warehouse into a modern temperature-controlled logistics facility for Pulleyn Specialist Transportation, demonstrating that existing industrial buildings need not be defined by their original specification – a principle increasingly shaping the built environment.
The brief was a high-performance cold store on an established industrial site. Instead of demolition and replacement, the design team retained and upgraded the existing warehouse with new cladding and refurbishment works, adding extensions to the north and south to increase storage capacity. The location was already an asset: close to the M4 corridor and well connected by road and public transport.
The constraint was the floodplain. Working with BE Design, Warehouse 4 was constructed on a raised structural system, allowing floodwater to pass beneath the building while creating storage capacity above. Maximising the available footprint gave the client greater operational capacity from the site while maintaining resilience against future flooding. Internally, the layout maximises pallet positions, with flexible racking allowing the facility to adapt as requirements change.
“Urban Edge Architecture were a pleasure to work with from start to finish. Their collaborative approach, practical thinking and focus on functionality helped maximise the site’s potential and deliver a facility that fully meets our operational requirements.”
Tom Wakefield – Pulleyn Specialist Transportation
The design also challenged perceptions of industrial architecture. Rather than a single large volume, the development was expressed as three simple built forms, breaking down the overall massing. Green cladding tones drawn from the surrounding tree canopies allow subtle variation between the elements while settling the building into its landscape; minimising joints in the cladding system also improved thermal performance – an approach increasingly valued across the built environment.
Sustainability was treated as a whole-building approach: PV panels and high-efficiency mechanical and electrical systems were deployed alongside improvements to the building envelope, enhanced landscaping, biodiversity measures and strategies for future adaptability.
The scheme demonstrates that sustainability is not only about adding new technologies. It is also about making intelligent decisions about what already exists.
“Thinking under the box” ultimately became a way of thinking beyond conventional solutions. Our team created a facility that does more than store goods: It unlocks the potential of a site, supports the client’s business objectives and provides a resilient model for the future of industrial architecture – a mindset increasingly influencing the built environment.
Contact Urban Edge Architecture
At Urban Edge Architecture, we help clients unlock the potential of industrial and logistics sites through innovative problem-solving and a deep understanding of the challenges facing modern developments, whether you are looking to transform an existing facility, make more of a constrained site, or deliver a new industrial, logistics or temperature-controlled development.
Contact Urban Edge Architecture to discuss your next project and discover how intelligent design can create buildings that work harder for your business.
