This office transformation reflects the significant departure from traditional corporate office designs of years gone by, by creating a comfortable and welcoming office environment in the heart of London where the occupiers well-being is at the forefront of the design process.
The building has had many lives, including the Watercress and Flower Girls’ Christian Mission, established by philanthropist John Groom in 1866 and then turned into a floristry factory. Later in 1939 the premises were occupied by the Holborn Plating Co4 and during WWII, no. 18 was an electric switch plate factory. Some historic photographs show that this building had distinctive arched windows and doors as well as a variation of the green colour found in many of the other buildings in Clerkenwell close. Eventually in the 1970s the site (including nos. 16-18) was proposed to be demolished and redeveloped as purpose built offices.
The existing building structure was a combination of flanking brick walls, primary steel beams spanning the flanking brick walls, infilled with timber joists between steel beams. Taking this cue from the existing building, we sought to repurpose and reuse steel beams in new locations, extend existing brick walls with brickwork to match existing and for new extension structures to be built of timber structure with primary steel framing.
With the heritage motifs in mind, variations of arches and mid-green colours were incorporated into the interior design, in combination with complementary earthy natural colours, to create a soothing palette. Externally in the rear extensions, natural coloured renders were used in contrast with dark metal colours as a nod to the existing front elevation that combines an brown/yellow brick with dark coloured windows, doors and railings.
The roof extension brings the building to be over 11m from the street level, and because the building has a single staircase the extensions were designed to include a fire engineered solution, introducing a pressurised stair system into the means of escape strategy. This strategy required a specialist designer, specialist equipment and thorough coordination of the requirements between the design team and the contractor.
Type
Location
GIA
Value
Status
Awards
Press
Workplace
Islington
11,258 sqft
Confidential
Complete
Mix Shortlist, 2025
AJ, July 2025
OnOffice, August 2025
Client
Project Manager
Planning Consultant
Heritage Consultant
Structural Engineer
MEP Engineer
Sustainability
Quantity Surveyor
Building Control
Fire Engineer
CDM
Acoustician
Agent
Agent
Visualiser
Photography
Atlas
Constructive
Savills
Heritage Practice
Morph
Mecserve
Mecserve
Constructive
Stroma
Bespoke
AGA
Acoustic24
Anton Page
Ellis Brown
Dan Fisher
Peter Ghobrial
