Shop Below, Homes Above: Converting Upper Floors in Sunderland City Centre

Across the North East, town-centre buildings have busy shops at street level and empty space upstairs. 20A Derwent Street in Sunderland city centre was one of them: active commercial units on the ground floor, and upper storeys used as ancillary office and storage space that no longer earned their place. Planning permission (24/00878/FUL) now allows those upper floors to become self-contained homes.

Proposed front elevation – shopfronts retained, upper floors converted to flats.

The challenge

Keep the commercial frontage trading, while turning the floors above into safe, quiet, compliant flats – in a building where a ground-floor kitchen extract has to pass up through every new home.

Circulation and fire safety first

We reorganised circulation around a protected stair and set out compliant travel distances and means of escape, so residents and the commercial units work independently and safely.

The extract flue: designed in, not bolted on

On many mixed-use schemes the flue is left to the contractor – and becomes the problem. Here it was designed as a coordinated building element:

• A fire-rated, acoustically separated enclosure through every level it crosses

• Silencer, electrostatic precipitator and fan located in section

• A flue-penetration detail included in the drawing package

Section – the extract route coordinated through each floor.

The drawing package

Location and site plans, existing and proposed floor plans, elevations and sections, extraction layout with flue-penetration detail, and the fire strategy. Building Control is going through a private Registered Building Control Approver. Architectural design and technical coordination by PLANEST, coordinated with Mold Design Lab.

Own a building with empty upper floors?

• Check the planning history and use class of every floor first

• Sort escape routes and fire separation before the layout is fixed

• Plan services that pass through the flats – extracts, drainage, ducts – at design stage

See the full project: Derwent Street Mixed-Use Conversion, Sunderland. More on the process: Change of Use Applications in Newcastle: A Complete Guide.

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