McLaren’s UK timber frame office: embodied carbon lessons for designers
Reviewed by Joe Ashwell
First reported on The Construction Index
30 Second Briefing
McLaren Construction has been appointed main contractor for Global Holdings’ 100,000 sq ft Xylo office in Clerkenwell, billed as the UK’s largest all-timber frame commercial building and costed at about £57m. The nine-storey structure will use glulam beams and cross-laminated timber supplied by Hybrid Structures to store more than 2,400 tonnes of CO₂, targeting embodied carbon 50% below a typical London office and operational emissions cuts of up to 82%. Designed for LETI Pioneer, NABERS UK 5.5-star and BREEAM ‘Excellent’, completion is scheduled for Q2 2028.
Technical Brief
- Structural frame uses glulam beams and CLT supplied by Hybrid Structures, a William Hare Group company.
- 6.5 m vaulted entrance lobby drives long-span timber roof and connection detailing.
- Internal programme includes a 3,640 sq ft “town hall” with bar, lounge and auditorium functions.
- Roofscape features a 3,800 sq ft garden plus five landscaped terraces, including a dedicated yoga deck.
- Active travel provision includes internal bike racks and shower facilities sized for commuter use.
Our Take
Among the 74 Infrastructure stories in our database, very few London office projects target a NABERS UK rating above 5 stars, so Xylo’s 5.5-star ambition positions Global Holdings and McLaren Construction at the leading edge of performance-led commercial design rather than just low-embodied-carbon branding.
A reported £57m cost for a mass-timber office of this scale in central London suggests that, by 2028 delivery, contractors like McLaren and Hybrid Structures will have established cost benchmarks that QSs can use to challenge default steel-and-concrete specifications on future Clerkenwell and City fringe schemes.
The combination of a claimed 50% embodied and 82% operational carbon reduction in a prime London office aligns with a small subset of our sustainability-tagged projects where landlords are explicitly designing to meet tightening UK and EU taxonomy-aligned criteria, which is likely to support future green financing or premium leasing strategies for Global Holdings Management Group UK.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
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