Occupying a prime central
London plot between the BT
Tower and Tottenham Court
Road, in the heart of the
Fitzrovia district, the 80 Charlotte Street
development will on completion offer
high-quality offices, residential apartments
and ground floor retail units along with a
new south-facing public space.
Overall, the 35,300m2 scheme comprises
three separate buildings: the main 80
Charlotte Street part - a nine-storey new
build that infills a rectangular block that is
also bounded by Whitfield Street, Chitty
Street and Howland Street - as well as the
adjacent 65 and 67 Whitfield Street. The
latter are two existing structures that have
been renovated, with each one receiving
three new steel-framed floors enabling
them to offer 1,020m2 of offices and
4,180m2 of residential space.
Befitting a project in such a prestigious
location, the design of 80 Charlotte Street
has used a bespoke steel-framed solution,
whereby all columns and beams will be
left exposed within the completed scheme,
along with the underside of the precast
flooring planks.
Discussing the design team’s choice of
a steel-framed solution, Make Architects
Jason McColl says: “The client liked the
idea of an expressed steel frame and the
slender columns the material allows.
“While the kind of tenants the scheme
and the area has attracted don’t really
want a traditional ‘white box’ office
environment where everything is boarded
up and hidden from view.”
The majority of 80 Charlotte Street
has been pre-let to Arup Group and The
Boston Consulting Group (BCG).
Sometimes referred to as an industriallook,
the exposed steelwork combined
with the 9m × 6m column grid pattern,
create a contemporary and spacious office
environment.
Many offices may have a larger column
pattern, but the 9m × 6m grid was chosen
as the optimum size to accommodate the
thin precast planks that allow the project
to maintain a 3.3m floor-to-ceiling height
and get nine-storeys into a designated
height restriction.
Having the steelwork fully exposed
within the completed building means
the connections and their bolts will also
be on show. Plenty of thought went into
the choice of bolts and hexagonal units
were chosen as the design team and client
thought they offered a look more in
keeping with the rest of the scheme.
“The exposed internal steelwork and
the connecting bolts will be a feature
element within the building, and so all
of the end plates are flush and the beams
and columns are all being repainted once
Mixed-use
Steel highlights
bespoke design
Fully exposed steelwork and floor slabs are the order of the day
for a high-profile architecturally-driven mixed-use scheme in
London’s Fitzrovia. Martin Cooper reports.
The client liked the
idea of a design
incorporating slender
steel columns
18 NSC
May 19
/Residential_and_mixed-use_buildings
/Braced_frames
/Visually_expressed_structural_forms
/Concept_design#Floor_grids
/Multi-storey_office_buildings
/Floor_systems#Precast_units
/Simple_connections
/Simple_connections#Flexible_end_plate_connections