Soho Place, Westminster

2025 RIBA London Award 

Mixed
Allford Hall Monaghan Morris for Derwent London
Contract value: Confidential
GIA: 36,980m²

A new addition to an iconic London quarter, Soho Place has triumphed over a multitude of technical and engineering challenges. Below ground the engineering task was monumental, with the buildings sitting over interwoven underground railway lines. 

The project consists of two separate buildings. No.1 Soho Place consists of 10 storeys of workspace with ground-floor retail, and straddles subterranean concourses and exits from Tottenham Court Road Station. Nos 2 & 4 Soho Place contain the first new theatre built in the West End for 50 years, highly prized rehearsal rooms and independently accessed workspace.

The buildings are linked by new public space reclaimed from Sutton Row, connecting pedestrians directly to the green space of Soho Square, now it has been closed to traffic. The workspace building features stone banding at the lower level of each of its steel-framed storeys. It turns the corner of Oxford Street and Charing Cross Road with an elegant curve, with facade interfaces rotated over one another to create south-facing amenity terraces. These provide stunning views of Centre Point, St Giles Circus – and even Crystal Palace.

Internally, the drama continues, with a suspended steel-framed lift and stair core, which draws visitors in to the heart of the plan. This structural derring-do showcases movement of people as a form of performance art, in transparent and highly legible circulation. Delight and interest are provided in the detail of the well-integrated public art and retro references to automobile upholstery, such as in an enormous, industrial-style lift car complete with roller shutter and leather bench, which elevates the comfort of the ride. 

Complementing the Allford Hall Monaghan Morris main build, one of the project’s highlights is the studio theatre auditorium space designed by Haworth Tompkins and managed by Nica Burns. This intimate space is protected from the cacophony of exhaust air from a Crossrail energy plant and yet the noise reduction measures mean that it is quieter than many of the capital’s grander theatres. 

The exquisitely proportioned volume provides accessibility for small productions that would otherwise struggle to secure central London venues. Lobbies and circulation spaces wrap the auditorium box and break with theatre tradition through glass facades that intersect with chrome-clad columns to emit and reflect the theatre of movement into the surrounding streets.  

Despite its 20-year gestation period of design, planning and construction, the project meets current embodied carbon targets at 550 kgCO₂/m² The team’s sustainability analysis influenced the design process and this is validated by the BREEAM Outstanding Award. External space is provided on every level and supports the client’s long-life, loose-fit, low-energy brief and its net-zero-carbon policy.

See the rest of the RIBA London winners here. And all the RIBA Regional Awards here.

To see the whole RIBA Awards process visit architecture.com.

RIBA Regional Awards 2025 sponsored by Autodesk, EH Smith, Equitone and VELUX