There’s a particular type of building in Shoreditch that we’ve got very good at working with: the Victorian warehouse conversion. Exposed brick, double-height ceilings, steel beams, and a tech company that’s moved in and needs the AC to handle 50 people, 50 monitors, and a server rack that nobody mentioned during the lease negotiation.

These buildings weren’t designed for modern cooling loads. They don’t have suspended ceilings to hide ductwork. The roof space is either occupied or structurally complicated. And the client wants the industrial aesthetic preserved, which means no visible equipment cluttering up their carefully curated office.

We’ve figured out how to make it work. We’ve been doing it across Shoreditch, Old Street, and the wider Silicon Roundabout area for years.

Tech Offices and the Heat Problem

Shoreditch’s tech companies generate more heat per square metre than almost any other office type. Rows of screens, developer workstations running hot, meeting rooms packed wall-to-wall for standups, and server racks that were supposed to be in a proper comms room but ended up in a corner behind the ping-pong table.

Our Shoreditch clients range from independent restaurants to large office blocks, all benefiting from commercial AC installation and responsive planned preventative maintenance.

Standard office AC sizing doesn’t work here. We design systems based on the actual heat load — people count, IT equipment, solar gain through those beautiful (but thermally inefficient) warehouse windows, and any server or network infrastructure in the space. A Daikin VRV system with ceiling-concealed ducted units works well in these buildings — the indoor units sit above the exposed ceiling in the void between the original structure and the roof, with discreet slot diffusers providing the airflow.

For smaller units — creative agencies, studios, small startups — wall-mounted Mitsubishi or Fujitsu splits are often the pragmatic choice. Quick to install, effective, and they don’t require ceiling work.

Server room cooling is its own discipline. A comms room or server rack area in a Shoreditch office needs dedicated cooling that runs 24/7, 365 days a year — not the same system that cools the office and switches off at 6pm. We install close-control AC units (Daikin, Mitsubishi, Airedale) that maintain precise temperature and humidity, with redundancy built in so that if one unit fails, the backup takes over before anything overheats.

The Food Scene

Shoreditch has one of London’s most dynamic food and drink scenes. The restaurants, bars, and street food operations around Brick Lane, Boxpark, Spitalfields Market, and the railway arches along Bethnal Green Road all need commercial refrigeration and kitchen ventilation that performs in tight, often unconventional spaces.

We’ve installed and maintained kit in railway arch restaurants where the curved ceiling makes standard canopy installation impossible. We’ve squeezed walk-in cold rooms into basement spaces under Brick Lane curry houses. We’ve set up cellar cooling for cocktail bars in converted Victorian shopfronts where the “cellar” is actually a cupboard under the stairs.

The food market operators — Boxpark, Old Spitalfields — need commercial refrigeration that can handle the throughput. Display fridges, prep fridges, ice machines, all running hard through service hours. These units take punishment and they need regular maintenance to stay reliable.

Creative and Studio Spaces

Shoreditch’s creative agencies, photography studios, recording studios, and co-working spaces each have their own HVAC quirks. Photography studios need consistent temperature for equipment reliability and to stop models shivering during winter shoots. Recording studios need AC that’s silent — literally inaudible — because any background hum gets picked up by microphones.

We’ve installed ultra-quiet split systems in recording studios using vibration-isolated mounts and oversized refrigerant pipework to reduce gas velocity noise. It’s niche work, but it’s the kind of problem we enjoy solving.

Working in the Area

Shoreditch’s streets are narrow, parking is adversarial, and half the buildings have access arrangements that involve a goods lift, a loading bay booked 48 hours in advance, or a back entrance through a shared courtyard. We build all of this into our scheduling.

For emergency work, our Covent Garden office gives us good access via the Central Line or straight across Clerkenwell. For planned maintenance rounds, we schedule the Shoreditch and Old Street sites together to make the most of the day.

The area’s changing fast — new developments going up constantly, older buildings being refurbished, businesses expanding and contracting. We work with landlords, managing agents, and tenant businesses across the EC1, EC2, and E1 postcodes.

Not sure what’s wrong with your system? Start with our guides on commercial kitchen ventilation issues and display fridge misting up for step-by-step diagnosis.

Call Us

Need AC, refrigeration, or ventilation in Shoreditch or Old Street? Call us on 020 3974 1419. We know the area, we know the buildings, and we’ll sort it out.

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