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Avery Associates Architects
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Client: Marylebone Warwick Balfour Group plc
This 75,000 ft2 (6,968 m2) nett new office building in the City of London was designed in association with Sidell Gibson Architects. It sits within a sensitive conservation area close to St. Paul' s Cathedral.
The back of the property abuts the Roman Wall and Amen Court, a quiet ecclesiastical enclosure with private landscaped gardens. The front of the property abuts the Old Bailey, the most famous courthouse in England.
The design responds to these issues by keeping the height at the back to the minimum and cladding the faade with vegetation so that it appears as a green backdrop to the Roman Wall. The windows here are proportioned as golden rectangles and are provided with a kind of 'ruff' like a stainless steel picture frame to project out through the vegetation.
At the front, the design takes its cue from the Old Bailey and uses a similar massing and round headed arch-form to create a round topped casket of Portland stone through which the office windows have been punched like the 'juliet balconies' of a theatre wherein to view the nefarious comings and goings next door.
To offset the loss of floorspace that a conventional vertical atrium would have caused in a building that tapers so markedly to the roof, the atrium here has been turned into a curve to channel the light right down into the entrance lobby. This has also the effect of creating a periscopic image of St Paul's, visible from within the lobby.
Avery Associates Architects © 2009 |
