The relationship with Loughborough College began with the 1909 Lounge project, a permanent dining and social building, and developed further when the College needed a new approach to its Digital Skills Hub after the original scheme came back significantly over budget.
Both projects have since led to earlier involvement across the estate. Streetspace now supports the College with feasibility, layouts and guide pricing for future buildings and extensions, helping emerging projects establish a realistic relationship between requirement, design and available capital before substantial commitments are made.
The 1909 Lounge
The first commission was the 1909 Lounge, a permanent dining and social building constructed on the footprint of a redundant structure. The project created a much-needed student hub and demonstrated that high-quality permanent accommodation could be developed and delivered efficiently around the requirements of a live college campus.
It also established the working relationship between Streetspace and the College. Design, cost and construction remained connected as the project developed, giving the College visibility over what was being proposed and how it would be delivered.
That experience became particularly relevant when the College needed to find a way forward with the Digital Skills Hub — a much larger scheme that had reached the end of the conventional design and tender process but could no longer proceed within its available funding.
Bringing the Digital Skills Hub back within budget
The College had ambitious plans for a new Digital Skills Hub supporting digital and technical education. The scheme had already been fully designed and taken through planning, but when it reached tender the cost came back at more than £3.5 million against the £2 million of Levelling Up funding available.
Rather than treating the existing design as fixed and looking for incremental savings, Streetspace started with the available capital as a fundamental part of the brief.
Working sessions with the College established what the building genuinely needed to retain and where the scheme could work harder. The footprint was reduced by around 20% through a more efficient layout, teaching accommodation was prioritised and non-essential areas rationalised. The roof form was simplified, while the glazed frontage and generous overhangs retained much of the architectural identity of the original proposal.
The structure was also raised to respond to the site’s flood-plain conditions. Design, engineering and cost developed together throughout the process, allowing the commercial consequences of decisions to be understood while there was still scope to influence them.
The result was not simply a stripped-back version of the original scheme. It was a redesigned project that protected the College’s educational priorities while bringing the building back within the capital available.
Delivering the new facility
The completed Digital Skills Hub provides approximately 440m² of accommodation, including six classrooms and associated facilities for digital and technical education.
The redesigned scheme was delivered on a fast programme within a live college environment and brought within the available £2 million funding. That meant a project which had stalled following the previous tender process could move forward without abandoning the core requirement it had been intended to address.
More importantly, the project demonstrated the value of bringing design, commercial and construction thinking together earlier. Cost was not left until the end of the design process to determine whether the scheme was viable; it informed the decisions that shaped the building.
For the College, that provided a more direct relationship between the educational brief, the design being developed and the capital available to deliver it.
A relationship that now starts earlier
The experience of the 1909 Lounge and Digital Skills Hub has changed the point at which Streetspace becomes involved with Loughborough College.
Rather than progressing an idea substantially before establishing whether the budget can support it, the estates team can bring forward emerging requirements at an earlier stage. Feasibility, layout and guide pricing can be considered together, allowing options to be tested before significant professional fees and internal resource are committed.
Streetspace continues to support the College with early-stage concepts and guide pricing for further buildings and extensions being considered across the campus. That accumulated knowledge also means each conversation does not have to begin from first principles: there is already an understanding of the estate, the College’s requirements and the commercial context in which future projects need to be developed.
What began with the delivery of an individual dining and social building has therefore developed into a broader working relationship around future capital investment — helping the College understand what is achievable before deciding which projects to take forward.
Discuss your estate plans
If you are considering future projects across a school or college estate, involving Streetspace early can help establish what the site, brief and available capital can realistically support before substantial design commitments are made.