Upper Duke Street, Liverpool

Located on Upper Duke Street within Liverpool’s Knowledge Quarter, this development delivers a 420-bed purpose-built student accommodation scheme for Fusion Students. The seven-storey building provides high-quality, modern student living in a prime city-centre location, within proximity to the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, the University of Liverpool and Liverpool John Moores University.

The site occupies a former vacant supermarket plot, forming part of a historically complex and culturally significant area of Liverpool. The scheme required careful coordination from the outset to ensure the new development responded appropriately to its constraints and its wider historic context.

Farrow Walsh were engaged to provide structural and civil engineering services, supporting the delivery of a robust and buildable design for this prominent student scheme.

The site presented notable below-ground challenges. It had previously been subject to stone extraction associated with Liverpool Cathedral and was historically used as both a graveyard and later slum housing. Critically, two subterranean tunnels linking the Liverpool docks with the city centre run beneath the site. The combination of historic ground disturbance, potential archaeological constraints, and existing subterranean infrastructure required a carefully considered engineering response.

Farrow Walsh commissioned detailed surveys to confirm the precise location of the tunnels and integrated this information into the structural strategy from an early stage. The foundation design was carefully developed to avoid imposing loads on the tunnels while maintaining efficiency for the seven-storey structure. By coordinating closely with the wider design team and responding proactively to the site’s historical context, we enabled the safe and effective development of this constrained urban site.