Architecture News Plus (ANP) – Architecture and Design Magazine

7-10 Old Bailey

This is a project by Avery Associates Architects + Sidell Gibson Architects and it is located at London, United Kingdom. It was submitted to Architecture News Plus (ANP) by Avery Associates Architects. Project's program: Office building. There are eight images for 7-10 Old Bailey.

: © Avery Associates Architects

Project details

Project name: 7-10 Old Bailey
Location: London, United Kingdom
Program: Office building
Area: Project Area: 6,968 m2
Year: Project Start: 2005 • Completion: 2009
More details: Cost: £ 21 Million
Client: Marylebone Warwick Balfour Group
Project by: Avery Associates Architects + Sidell Gibson Architects

Project images

Designer's statement

This 75,000 ft2 (6,968 m2) nett new office building in the City of London 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 façade 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 ‘ruff-like’ stainless steel picture frame to project out through the vegetation.

At the front, the design takes its cue from the Old Bailey and uses similar materials and massing 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 morning sunlight 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.

The building was designed in association with Sidell Gibson Architects.

Awards:

Winner of the prestigious Chicago Athenaeum International Architecture Award, judged as one of the 95 most significant new buildings in the world; 2010.