“The one that’s basically just painted white.”
Alfred Place
London WC1
Client — CPC Group
Area — 5,600sqm
Use — Office
Status — Planning permission granted
Our proposal for the
renewal of this site near Tottenham Court Road stitches together two existing
buildings to create high quality and characterful shared workspaces for
start-ups and technology firms in Central London.
Our preliminary advice to the client was simply to:
‘paint the existing buildings white and re-let them.’
Credit to that client however, they wanted something more ambitious – and of course we were delighted about that.
As well as additional storeys on top and to the rear, our design created a new social heart to the scheme by opening up double-height spaces through the ground floor slab – providing exciting new spaces for the tenants to socialise in, collaborate and build a community.
Unfortunately, complications with the lease led the client to sell the site to a new owner who decided to take an alternative approach with a different architect:
...which was to ‘paint the buildings white and re-let them’
Our preliminary advice to the client was simply to:
‘paint the existing buildings white and re-let them.’
Credit to that client however, they wanted something more ambitious – and of course we were delighted about that.
As well as additional storeys on top and to the rear, our design created a new social heart to the scheme by opening up double-height spaces through the ground floor slab – providing exciting new spaces for the tenants to socialise in, collaborate and build a community.
Unfortunately, complications with the lease led the client to sell the site to a new owner who decided to take an alternative approach with a different architect:
...which was to ‘paint the buildings white and re-let them’
as it was...
.... and then basically painted white - we’re architects so we decided to describe this as ‘ossification’ instead.
We’ve only ourselves to blame.
