28/05/2026
Rare Dementia Support Centre Project is Completed 🎉
Having undertaken our final site visit earlier this week, we are delighted to see the Rare Dementia Support Centre is completed ready for handover to UCL.
Working in collaboration with Ark Build Plc, CPW, The JPP Group, and the assembled UCL team of technical advisers including Hawkins\Brown, AECOM, Arcadis and H***e Lea, we have developed Hawkins\Brown and UCL's vision for the Rare Dementia Support Centre with Clague Architects, providing architectural and principal designer services.
Through the project, a pair of underutilised and institutional Grade II Listed Georgian townhouses, located within Woburn Square, Bloomsbury, London have been refurbished, converted and brought back into use to create the world's first centre of excellence, dedicated to providing support for people living with rare dementia along with the integration of research and education about rare and young onset dementias.
Funded by The National Brain Appeal, The Rare Dementia Support Centre creates a high quality environment with calm, welcoming homely spaces with a garden space to provide a mix of interactions from one to one, small groups, seminars and training. The upper floors provide office and co-working spaces for research and education.
The works to the building have included the strengthening of the floors, sensitive upgrades to provide fire compartmentation to the staircases, acoustic separation between spaces, the installation of external platform lifts and alterations to the internal layout to ensure that the lower floors are accessible, the replacement of the internal doors, the repair and replacement of the decorative fibrous plaster cornices throughout the building, along with the creation of a calm oasis of a garden to the rear.
The project has been designed and constructed to achieve a Gold SKA rating ⭐
