A look behind the scenes of St James's Gateway
IN NUMBERS
£45m total contract cost; £3500 Gifa cost per m2; 11,500m2 gross external area in m2; 25.8 Kg CO2/m2 building emission rate; Breeam Excellent; Code For Sustainable Homes 3; 27 Regent Street Grade 2* listing; Construction management form of contract; +723m2 retail (A1) uplift on site (GEA): +2,839m2 office (B1) uplift; +2,854 m2 residential (C3) uplift
The first visual identity that Eric Parry Architects has created on a commercial scheme, this has been a little guesswork based on a lot of research and a fair amount of instinct and good sense. The residential is split over two addresses and two tenures – 20 Jermyn Street which links into the office core and has five apartments for sale, and 11 flats for rent at 15 Jermyn Street.
Associate director Merit Claussen describes how they created a target group. The sale flats they dubbed ‘made to measure’. Behind the retained turn of the century facade, the practice has made them more crafted, drawing on the tailoring of Jermyn Street and Saville Row. ‘I looked up the main businesses in the area, private banking, mining and media in nearby Soho and imagined someone with a family in the Westcountry who came to work in London during the week. They would want space for the family in the school holidays and would be in a senior position,’ she says. So the flats were designed to more traditional tastes with oak parquet, granite and natural stone (although the parquet patterns did appear a little playful).
Blomfield’s Barclays bank on Regent Street has been imbued with a different character. The client’s original brief was for ‘Mayfair’ style, or ‘five colours beige’ as Claussen describes it. The practice imagined something closer to loft living. Although there is a mismatch between the facade and the interior the ceiling heights are generous and the grand balconies are mediated by flat rolled steel windows. ‘People associate them with very profane buildings,’ says Claussen. ‘Like factories.’ She imagined its inhabitants dropping into the city from abroad for a year or two or perhaps having a home elsewhere and coming to Piccadilly for the cosmopolitan buzz. Agents’ comments about those living there eating out and even going for breakfast at the club allowed the practice to open out the kitchen to the living area, though there is still plenty of fridge space, wine storage and a very loungeable table. The stairwell, lined with white glazed bricks like the lightwell it supersedes, and the metal staircase reinforce the idea of loft living, although plush banquettes and horse hair panels in reception add luxury.
CREDITS
Architect: Eric Parry Architects
Client: The Crown Estate in partnership with the Health Care Of Ontario Pension Plan
Structural engineer: Waterman
M&E consultant: Mecserve Qs
Planning consultant: CBRE
Cost consultant: Gardiner & Theobald
Acoustics: Alan Saunders
Lighting: DPA Lighting
Public realm: Atkins
Development manager: Stanhope
Project manager: Gardiner & Theobald
Main contractor: Lend Lease
Project manager: Stanhope
Construction manager: Lend Lease
Artists: Richard Deacon, Stephen Cox, Alan Micklethwaite
SUPPLIERS
Faience cladding: Shaws Of Darwen / Szerelemy
Portland stone cladding: Albion / Szerelemy
Stone restoration: Paye
Composite windows: Schindler
Shopfronts: Drawn Metal
Metalwork: Pad
Facade lighting: DPA
AV installation: Cornflake
MEP: Gardner/Briggs and Forrester/Phoenix
Lifts: Otis
Joinery and interior fit out: Brown And Carroll/Ruddy
Stone floors: Haysom/Grants
Stairs: Whl /Pad
Handrails and balustrade: Handrail Design
Doors: Shadbolt
Glazed sliding doors: Record
Sanitaryware: Duravit /Villeroy And Boch
Taps/showers: Hansgröhe