The super-cool, luxury student accommodation in Southampton designed by Fuse for VITA Student opened in September 2014. The conversion of Richmond House, a former 12 storey city centre office building, boasts 212 stylish, new studio apartments and some stunning shared spaces. Less than a mile from Southampton Solent University and within walking distance of Southampton’s stunning waterfront it’s now the top choice for students in the city.
Vita Student is the UK’s No.1 student property brand that wins awards for its commitment to customer service and experience – the first of its kind dedicated to designing, developing and delivering the highest quality, purpose built student residences in the UK. VITA Student Southampton was Fuse’s first live project for Select Property and had a challenging timescale to say the least! Our clients brief was to convert the 1960’s office building into 212 stunning studios with a ground floor hub space within a 12 month period. The building needed to be completely stripped back to the original concrete structure leaving only the precast concrete upstands to each level of the façade and to achieve the 212 studios, a completely new floor needed to be added to the lower wing of the building. Fuse were first appointed mid-August 2013 with the planning application for the major refurbishment project being submitted at the end of September. The Main Contractor, Carillion, started on site with the strip out works in January 2014 with only 8 months to complete the scheme! Whilst the construction works were progressing an existing tenant on the ground floor of the lower wing (a Medical Centre) had to remain open during the works and would only vacate the premises in Q1 of 2016. This resulted in the construction works being carried out in two phases. Fuse and the original design team were asked to complete phase two of the works, 10 studios and half of the ground floor into additional Hub space for the students, late 2015 with a view to opening in September 2016.
The Fuse team of Simon Clarke, David Hall, Craig Russell, Nathan Curtis and Jeff Roberts delivered the project successfully and moved on to the next VITA Student scheme in Sheffield. Structural engineers for the project were Bailey Johnson Hayes, mechanical and electrical engineering was by CE2 and Cost Management was by Abacus. The scheme opened its first phase of 202 studios in September 2014 with the second and final phase opening in September 2016, and is now fully occupied.
