The Burrell Collection comprises a vast array of precious art from around the world. The museum in Glasgow is one of Scotland's few Category-A listed post-war buildings. Unfortunately, a steady deterioration of the building fabric had meant that essential intervention would be required to bring it up to contemporary museum standards, reverse environmental issues detrimental to the museum’s operations and guarantee its future. 

Arup adopted a fabric first approach which, through an array of transformative designs, improved the building's energy performance and delivered significant carbon savings by meticulously considering all aspects of the design and reconstruction of the building envelope from the outset. Our approach kept circular economy principles at the heart of the project, with as much original material recovered and recycled as possible, maintaining the building's history whilst adding to its sustainability credentials. 

Between overheating (from south-facing glass) and a leaking roof, the building urgently needed improvement. Our modern glazing and airtight enveloping saves 200 tonnes of carbon emissions per year alone, helping the building achieve BREEAM Excellent rating – a significant achievement for a Category-A listed building’s refurbishment. The project also won Cultural and Leisure Project of the Year at the British Construction Industry Awards and Refurbishment Project of the Year at the Façade Design and Engineering Awards.  

Façade engineering and design 

Concentrating on the building envelope from the outset of a new build or retrofit project embeds sustainability into its DNA. Focusing on a ‘fabric first’ approach, which prioritises improving a building’s existing fabric, we inspected and investigated the façade systems in a pre-disassembly audit early in the design process. Our intent was to retain as much material as possible for refurbishment and reuse in the upgraded façades, a process which enabled a reduction in operational CO2 emissions of around 69%.  

During this process, for example, we determined the original glazing could be reused for architectural glass production. More than 4.5km of glazing framework was reused through a painstaking process of detailed inspection, structural calculation, cleaning, repair and strengthening of fixings to support the new high-performance glazing units, saving 8.5 tons of aluminium.  

We designed and detailed subtle interventions, implementing new performance elements such as a bespoke gasket system and thermal breaks to the existing glazing frame, replacing non-visible roof systems with modern alternatives and installing high-performance glazing into the existing system. These interventions contributed more than 50% of the overall building energy use improvements. 

The improved glazing solar control across the building will save 70 tonnes of carbon per annum in operation, whilst thermal and airtightness improvements will contribute a further 130 tonnes of carbon reduction per annum. 

These contributions, along with improved UV filtering and security, are helping to safeguard the collection in the newly refurbished museum.  

Gallery space at Burrell Collection
The Burrell Collection houses more than 9,000 objects from across six millennia
Exterior image of the Burrell Collection
The Burrell Collection is the first refurbished museum in the UK to attain a BREEAM Excellent rating
Render of Burrell collection building
16 tonnes of recycled glass was recovered and used as feedstock for the manufacture of new architectural glass

Circular economy 

During the refurbishment process more than 16 tonnes of usable glass was recovered for processing into new architectural glass. This is rarely achieved in refurbishment projects and saves CO2 by eliminating the need to extract raw materials. No glass material removed from this building was sent to landfill; body-tinted, laminated and large-scale glass units which could not be recycled were processed into other building products. 

Interior of Burrell Collection
80 tonnes of glass was repurposed as part of the project, with 16 tonnes recycled into architectural glass