AHMM has recently secured planning permission for two projects in very different locations. In Wandsworth, south west London, AHMM’s plans for the redevelopment of the Ferrier Street industrial estate (above, top) were granted consent by the local council; the mixed use scheme for TR Property Investment Trust includes office and residential units including affordable housing. Meanwhile, in OKC, AHMM’s proposals for the office and retail Block 13 in the city’s developing Wheeler District (bottom) were approved by Oklahoma City’s Riverfront Design Committee.
Detailed planning permission has been granted by the London Borough of Newham for the redevelopment of the landmark but currently derelict Millennium Mills building, forming the first phase of plans for a major regeneration of Silvertown Quays, a historic dock area of east London. The overall development by Lendlease and Starwood Capital will provide thousands of new homes, new jobs and non-residential space including commercial, brand, retail, hotel and community use. As well as Millennium Mills, an imposing flour mill that has not been in use since the 1980s, the first phase also includes Silo D, a Grade II listed, modernist reinforced concrete grain silo, which will also become a focal point of the new development.
The Bower won the WAF Award for Completed Buildings – New and Old at the World Architecture Festival held last week in Amsterdam. Judges commented on The Bower’s ‘clever realisation of [the] existing to create unique office space knitting together city fabric with minimal 'acupuncture'-like intervention.’ Six AHMM projects were shortlisted for awards and presented to festival judges in a ‘crit’ format watched by festival attendees, and Simon Allford talked about AHMM’s FifthMan publishing initiative on the Festival Hall Stage. Find out more about this year’s festival and award winners here.
The Ray Farringdon has won the Brick Awards Commercial Project award for 2019, given at a ceremony in London this week. The annual awards are organised by the Brick Development Association and celebrate the best examples of the use of clay brick in the built environment; the Commercial Award was also won by AHMM in 2018 for Television Centre. In Oklahoma, three AHMM projects have won AIA Oklahoma Design Awards. 1212 Hudson, a mixed-use revitalisation and extension of a historic cinema building in midtown Oklahoma City, won a Merit Award, while 8th Street Market and Oso on Paseo won Citation Awards. Find out more about these and other AIA Oklahoma winners here.
The Bower has won the Building Award for Office Refurbishment of the Year, announced at a ceremony last night (6 November) in London. The project has reinvented an existing group of 1960s buildings which have been refurbished and complemented by new additions, while connections through and around the site have been improved. Meanwhile, Dora Carr Close has won an Oxford Preservation Trust Award, accepted by RUFF Architects who delivered AHMM’s mixed-tenure housing scheme in the Northway area of Oxford.
Following its recent topping out ceremony, 2 New Bailey Square has reached another construction milestone with the completion of its steelwork frame. The eleven storey exposed steel structure allows for flexible open floorplates, while also providing external amenity at each level and solar shading for occupants. Part of the New Bailey masterplan for a key site linking Salford and Manchester, 2 New Bailey Square is due to complete in July 2020.
Director Paul Monaghan joined Television Centre clients Stanhope plc, Mitsui Fudosan and AIMCo this week to celebrate the launch of the book Thinking Outside the Box: Television Centre Reimagined. Written by Jonathan Bell, editor-at-large of Wallpaper magazine, it tells the story of the famous ‘factory for television’ and how its recent transformation has opened it up to the public for the first time. Find out more and buy the book here.
BT, the multinational telecommunications company, has agreed to a twenty year pre-let of Assembly Bristol. The eleven-storey office block is the first phase of the development and one of three new buildings on the site. Its expressed steel frame construction allows for uninterrupted floorspace, with private external terraces at each floor. Due for competition in 2020, the first staff are set to move into the 201,000 sq ft property in 2021.
Bristol City Council has granted planning for a new student residential scheme in the emerging Temple Quarter Enterprise Campus in Bristol. The project is a joint venture partnership between the University of Bristol, Equitix, and Campus Living Villages and will be home to 953 postgraduate students. In addition to student accommodation the scheme incorporates a range of amenities such as a gym, games room, communal lounge and roof garden, as well as staff offices and meeting rooms for the university. The scheme is due to start on site in mid-2020.
Lambeth Council’s Planning Committee has voted unanimously in favour of AHMM’s proposals for the redevelopment of the Elizabeth House site in Waterloo for international workspace provider HB Reavis. The plans will create around 1.2 million square feet of workspace supporting up to 11,000 jobs, together with new retail and a transformed public realm next to Waterloo Station, which is the UK’s busiest train station. A key feature of the proposed project is a one-acre, publicly accessible garden promenade, directly connected to the Waterloo concourse level. A new pedestrianised street, the Curve, will also provide a much-needed new route lined with shops and cafés. Find out more about the plans on the project website.
1 Finsbury Avenue – part of the ongoing reinvention of the Broadgate estate that will also include AHMM’s 1 Broadgate – has celebrated its official opening with an event held in the building’s atrium. Speakers included clients Chris Grigg and Nigel Webb from British Land and Madeleine Cosgrave from GIC, and a film produced for the launch featured Paul Monaghan talking about how the project has transformed the original 1980s office building into a mixed use retail, leisure and flexible office space. The celebration was held around the Atoll, a new 7.5m tall mosaic tiled structure by artist Morag Myerscough.
FifthMan is a publishing project set up by AHMM in 2015. Aiming to show the practice's work and interests from new perspectives, FifthMan allows us to play outside accepted publishing formats, commission and collaborate with our favourite designers, writers and photographers, to think laterally and have fun. Our new website www.fifthman.co.uk is both a shop and showcase for FifthMan's continually evolving bookshelf.
Barracks Court, a Grade II listed former officers’ house in Woolwich, south London has completed on site. Part of the Royal Arsenal masterplan and situated approximately four metres from the new Crossrail station at Woolwich Arsenal, the former officers’ barracks have been transformed to create 34 new homes across the heritage block and a newly constructed modular block. The project has now been handed over to the client with the first residents moving in in early October.
2 Television Centre has won the national Commercial Workspace and the overall Best of the Best awards at the British Council for Offices’ (BCO) annual awards given in London last night (1 October). Judges praised the project’s ‘excellent workspace and distinguished design’ that has ‘established new frontiers of workspace provision’. Find out more about the BCO awards here.
Construction work has begun on site at Tower Hamlets Town Hall, which transforms the Grade II listed former Royal London Hospital into a new publicly accessible town hall housing a new council chamber, library, café and public facilities. Initial works on site had involved removing the old NHS fit-out and large amounts of asbestos. The groundbreaking was marked with a ceremony in which John Biggs, the Mayor of Tower Hamlets, sealed a time capsule within the walls of the building. The small metal cylinder contained a letter from the mayor along with letters from local schoolchildren and photos of the original hospital building.
Television Centre and Burntwood School currently feature in the exhibition Revitalising Heroic Modern - Lessons from the UK, part of a series of fringe events in the run up to the eighth mASEANa International Conference in Singapore. The exhibition showcases successful examples of conservation and adaptive reuse of post-war Modernist buildings in the UK, and is organised by Docomomo in association with the RIBA and the British High Commission in Singapore. The exhibition at the URA Centre runs until 9 October and mASEANa runs from 31 October to 2 November.
A new community-focused craft beer hall in Oklahoma City opened its doors to the public this week. Social Capital reinvents a former transmission shop, creating three bars, two kitchens and a variety of social spaces, including OKC’s largest rooftop terrace overlooking the brand new Scissortail Park nearby.
Cambridgeshire County Council has granted planning permission for the Alconbury Weald Civic Hub, which will provide a new home for the council and some of its services at Alconbury, a former RAF site near Huntingdon. The new civic hub is AHMM’s fifth intervention at Alconbury Weald, and is due to start on site in autumn 2019.
This autumn the Building Centre in London is celebrating ceramics in architecture with the exhibition Hand Held to Super Scale: Building with Ceramics. Exploring the close connection between ceramic objects and large-scale urban interventions, it features mock ups and samples of the ceramic fins at AHMM’s Hawley Wharf. The exhibition runs until 31 January 2020 and also includes work by Eric Parry Architects with artist Richard Deacon, FAT Architecture with Grayson Perry, and Granby Workshop amongst others.
Newham Council has approved plans for a mixed use development in Stratford. The new scheme replaces the 1970s office block, Morgan House, creating 423 residential units, a 17 storey hotel, a 10 storey office building, and new retail opportunities at ground level. The scheme also incorporates storage and amenities for the existing market stall holders.
This weekend (21-22 September) AHMM will be participating in Open House London, the annual architecture festival that gives access to hundreds of buildings across the city, some of which are normally closed to the public. Three AHMM buildings will be offering architect-led tours: New Scotland Yard, The Bower, and White Collar Factory. The Library at Willesden Green, Barking Town Centre and the Barbican Centre will also be taking part. On Sunday, AHMM will be repeating its very popular Mini City Home Inventors event for Open House Families. See the full Open House programme here.
AHMM’s Alder Centre team attended a celebration for the project in Liverpool this week, where Director Paul Monaghan presented a flythrough animation illustrating the design. The event, held at the Alder Hey Childrens’ Hospital, was attended by hospital staff and volunteers as well as families who depend on the service. Dame Jo Williams, Chair of Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust, welcomed the new Charity Chair Graham Morris OBE and Antoinette Sandbach MP, who was instrumental in securing funding for the project, spoke of her personal experiences using the Centre.
Park Central and East Grove, Elephant Park have celebrated reaching their highest point with an event to mark the occasion held on site. This third phase of the Elephant Park Development comprises 829 apartments across two 24-storey towers, nine mansion blocks and variety of retail units, including opportunities for affordable retailers. Park Central and East Grove join West Grove, an AHMM designed tower part of the second phase of the masterplan, which reached practical completion earlier this month.
Allford Hall Monaghan Morris has been announced as one of five finalists in an RIBA-backed competition to design a new Ambassador’s Residence at the British Embassy in Beijing. The new residence is part of a larger plan to redevelop the British Embassy in Beijing, which includes the construction of new embassy facilities and staff housing. The winner of the competition, which has been run on behalf of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, will be announced on 21 October.
Allford Hall Monaghan Morris has won an invited competition to design a new International Exchange Centre near Jiaozhou City, Qingdao. The new centre consists of 85,000sqm of event, conference and exhibition facilities under a 350m diameter roof structure, set in a unique water front location at the heart of the SCO demonstration area.
Planning permission has been granted for a new mixed-use retail and office development at the eastern end of Oxford Street in London. The new building connects Oxford Street and Soho Square, preserving a Grade II listed building as well as a series of retained facades of historic merit. Accessed from Soho Square, a new public roof garden will provide far-reaching views across Soho and the West End.
Plot G of the Brentford Masterplan has been granted planning permission by the London Borough of Hounslow. Part of the wider masterplan conceived by AHMM, Glenn Howells Architects, Maccreanor Lavington and Grant Associates, the mixed use block will accommodate retail and residential units, car parking and leisure uses to activate the waterside. The frame of the building is already complete, acting as a temporary car park to facilitate the first phase of the masterplan. Find out more on the project website.
Allford Hall Monaghan Morris is one the five practices shortlisted in an RIBA-organised competition to design a new combined departmental complex for the University of Portsmouth. The new building, located in the Victoria Park area of the city, will be home to the university’s Faculty of Business and Law and Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, and accommodate administrative facilities and a new public space.
Allford Hall Monaghan Morris first opened its doors for business at 7-9 Charlotte Street on Monday 31st July 1989, exactly 30 years ago today. Happy birthday to AHMM, and thank you to everyone who has been part of our first three decades of practice.
Planning consent for the Magna Square scheme has been granted by Runnymede Borough Council. The new mixed-use development creates a gateway to the town centre and will act as a catalyst for the regeneration of the local area. It combines new retail and leisure spaces with purpose-built student accommodation and a variety of residential units, including affordable homes for rent and shared ownership properties, and new landscape and public spaces. Work is expected to start on site later this year.
This year’s Victor Kite Award for Design Technology has been awarded to Ernest Chin Yang. Now in its sixth year, the AHMM-sponsored award for students at The Bartlett School of Architecture recognises the best work in Design Technology (year 2), a module that evolves students’ technical and architectural expertise in detail design. The award was established in memory of architect Victor Kite, a mentor to Simon, Jonathan, Paul and Peter as Part II students at The Bartlett, and later to many others at AHMM, where he played a significant role in the practice and its work.
Television Centre and Signal Townhouses have won RIBA National Awards, announced this morning (27 June). The award judges praised Television Centre as ‘an ambitious reinvention of this London landmark into a working, living, thriving community… this project provides an enhanced and significant contribution to its immediate environment and delivers a new radiating energy.’ Commenting that Signal Townhouses ‘make a significant contribution to a former industrial area, transforming it into a high-quality urban quarter,’ judges also noted the project’s ‘generous light-filled family homes, with a unique sense of space.’
RIBA National Awards are given to buildings across the UK recognised as significant contributions to architecture. Find out more about this year’s National Award winners here.
The London Borough of Tower Hamlets has granted planning for Frameworks, a new office building within the Wood Wharf masterplan in London’s former docklands. The new 15 storey office for Canary Wharf Group uses an expressed steel frame, creating adaptable and flexible floorplates with a terrace at every level. 8 Union Square is expected to start on site early 2020 and complete in 2023.
The Hackney Wick and Fish Island masterplan team, which includes the AHMM team responsible for the mixed use scheme at Bream Street, has been recognised with a Planning Award for Excellence in Placemaking at High Densities. The Planning Awards aim to recognise the best in planning related design including placemaking, urban design and regeneration – read more about the winners here. Bream Street is currently on site and expected to complete in 2020.
Allford Hall Monaghan Morris has joined fellow Stirling Prize winning practices in signing an open letter calling for architects and the wider construction industry to take collective action to address the climate and biodiversity emergency. You can read the letter here.
Squirrel Park, AHMM’s repurposing of shipping containers to create four new homes in Oklahoma City, has won an AIA Small Project Award. The award is given by the American Institute of Architects to projects across the United States and Squirrel Park is one of 12 winners this year, all of which you can see here. This is AHMM’s second AIA Small Project award, Grand Lake Poolhouse having won in 2018.
The Bower, Signal Townhouses and Television Centre have won 2019 RIBA London Awards, announced this week. The Bower was praised as ‘an excellent example of clever and inventive architecture adding both commercial and social value’, while Signal Townhouses ‘sets the benchmark very high for future developments in the area and clearly demonstrates the demand for contemporary homes.’ At Television Centre, judges commented that ‘with design vision on a grand scale, the client and architects have majestically celebrated this listed historic piece of modern architecture which now gives generously to the public realm.’ Find out more about all of this years’ RIBA Regional Awards here.
Bristol City Council has granted planning permission for One Portwall Square, a new office building close to Bristol Temple Meads Station for developer Nord. The new six storey office building replaces a disused squash court and car park. The scheme retains the existing silver maple trees on Portwall Lane, creating a new pocket square with the potential to accommodate pop-up retail. Most significantly for AHMM, Portwall Gate will become its new home in Bristol, with the practice having agreed to pre-let one floor of the building.
Two of AHMM’s models have been selected for this year’s Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. The models of the Alder Centre for Child Bereavement and the BRE Open Innovation Hub will be exhibited in the architecture room, this year curated by Spencer de Grey with a focus on sustainability. Now in its 251st year, the Summer Exhibition is the world’s largest open submission art show exhibiting around 1200 works in all media. The exhibition runs from 10 June to 12 August.
Design proposals for Parliament’s Northern Estate, the group of buildings along Parliament Street and Whitehall, have been launched for consultation today (8 May). The plans are the essential first step to enable the restoration and renewal of the Palace of Westminster and will see a new temporary House of Commons Chamber and associated facilities designed by Allford Hall Monaghan Morris, together with workspace for all 650 MPs and staff within a single secure site. The development of the plans follows the decision of both Houses of Parliament in 2018 to temporarily move out of the Palace of Westminster while essential work to the building takes place.
The temporary Chamber will be delivered within a redeveloped Richmond House, the former Department of Health building which Parliament took possession of in 2018. The design proposals retain key frontages visible to the public on Whitehall including refurbishing the Georgian Richmond Terrace as well as 54 Parliament Street and 85 Whitehall. The chamber has been carefully designed to replicate the familiar character and the functions of the existing House of Commons chamber and will provide a greater level of accessibility for MPs and visitors, including an accessible public gallery.
AHMM is working with Lendlease, the construction consultant for the project, as well as conservation architect Feilden + Mawson. The wider masterplan for the Northern Estate site is being led by BDP. A public consultation has been launched alongside a new website, with comments sought by 28 June 2019 prior to a series of planning applications being submitted to Westminster Council.
2 Television Centre has been presented with the Commercial Workplace Award at this week’s BCO London Awards lunch. The award recognises the best in new build, speculative commercially let office buildings in the city. The judges commented that ‘the architecture of the exterior reflected the site’s history, while the interior delivered a flexible and sustainable space, fit for a modern workforce.’ The new build ten storey mixed use block is an integral part of the Television Centre masterplan, completing Graham Dawbarn’s original ‘question mark’.
Television Centre has been named one of seven projects shortlisted for the Architects’ Journal AJ100 Building of the Year. The winner will be announced at the annual AJ100 dinner in June, where the results of the Architects’ Journal’s AJ100 survey will also be revealed. Find out more about the award and other shortlisted projects here.
Work is underway on site at London Square Bermondsey, a masterplan scheme in south London which regenerates a run-down and disjointed industrial estate, bringing many vacant and under-used buildings with historic value back into use. On completion the scheme will provide more than 400 new homes and approximately 20,000 sqm of commercial space dedicated to small and medium-sized enterprises.
Seven AHMM projects have been shortlisted for this year’s RIBA regional awards. The Bower, Hawley School, Television Centre, Signal Townhouses, St Thomas’s Apartment have been shortlisted in the London region, while Dora Carr Close has been shortlisted in the South region and Ermine Street Church Academy in the East region. All seven will be visited by awards juries before winners are announced in May. Find out more about the RIBA Awards here.
Associate Director Robert Romanis, senior architect Paul Jones and architect Jazmin Rogers departed this morning (7 March) on the Cycle to MIPIM, a 1500km cycle ride organised by Club Peloton to raise money for children’s charities including Coram and AHMM’s Charity of the Year The Magpie Project. The AHMM team has already raised more than £9000 but there’s still time to sponsor Robert, Paul or Jazmin online.
Belfast City Council has unanimously granted planning permission for The Sixth, the redevelopment of the Grade B2 listed former Belfast Telegraph offices and printing facilities on Royal Avenue. Built in 1886, the buildings were home to the newspaper for more than 100 years before it moved to new premises in 2016. The mixed-use project – AHMM’s first in Northern Ireland – includes retail and restaurant units at ground level, with 230,000 square feet of office space above, topped with a rooftop running track.
Work has begun on Building A at Assembly Bristol, a new development near Bristol Temple Meads Station. The office led mixed use scheme will provide a variety of flexible commercial floorplates, with an assortment of retail, restaurant and flexible units at ground level. Building A is due for completion in 2020, at the same time as a major new waterfront public space which will be home to a rolling programme of events, public art and outdoor green places and will provide a connection to the rest of the city.
8th Street Market has won the Small Scale Rehabilitation Award at the Urban Land Institute Oklahoma Impact Awards, given at an event on Friday night (15 February). The Impact Awards honour projects that represent best practice in land use and development through their contributions to the built environment and the public realm. ULI is an international organisation bringing together cross-disciplinary real estate and land use experts, and the Oklahoma chapter has presented its Impact Awards for the last five years. Find out more about ULI Oklahoma here.
The Bower, the reinvention of a collection of 1960s buildings on the Old Street roundabout, is now complete. A mix of retail, restaurants and larger floorplate offices is housed within the reclad office tower, the warehouse to the rear, and a collection of smaller new buildings which line the site and frame the new mews. On the ground floor, a new route from Old Street cut through the base of the slab block introduces permeability into the site, and further connects it into a wider network of buildings, routes and places.
Developer Backhouse has revealed the first show home on its Castle Cary site. One of three distinct housing typologies, the ‘Manor House’ home offers either four bedrooms over two storeys or five bedrooms over three. Each variation has two reception rooms and large open-plan kitchen diners. The show home is open to potential buyers with the site completing in late 2019.
Television Centre won the award for Best Mixed Use Scheme at this year’s London Planning Awards held last night (31 January) at the National Gallery. White Collar Factory was also highly commended for the Mayor’s Award for Sustainable and Environmental Planning. Organised by London First in partnership with the Mayor of London, and supported by London councils, the Royal Town Planning Institute and the Planning Officers Society, the awards recognise outstanding planning practice and celebrate the sector’s contribution to London as a successful and sustainable place to live and work. Find out more about the London Planning Awards here.
The steels have arrived and construction can now begin on site at 2 New Bailey in Salford. 2 New Bailey is a ten-storey office building, conceived as a 21st century warehouse for work; its exposed structure allows for generous floorplates and solar shading while creating an elegantly fabricated facade. On completion it will also offer retail units at ground level and a roof terrace with wild meadow communal gardens for tenants.
Work has started on site at Classen16, a new mixed use residential scheme, in the vibrant Plaza District of Oklahoma City. The project comprises 48 residential units of one and two bedrooms, with a 3,800-square foot retail space. Classen16 will be clad with a shimmering, scale-like aluminium shake that reacts to the changing quality of light throughout the day, a subtle, playful nod to the locally-renowned seafood restaurant that once occupied the site. Classen16 is due to complete in summer 2020.
Work has begun on the initial strip-out of existing buildings on the Tower Hamlets Civic Centre site, and already the original Georgian structure of the former Royal London Hospital can be seen in some of the spaces. The Grade ll listed former hospital building will be refurbished and extended to house a new council chamber within a new home for Tower Hamlets Council, providing a broad range of public services to the borough’s residents. Construction is due to start on site in summer 2019.
Excavation and piling works have begun on site at King’s Cross P2, marking the start of construction of the 12-storey mixed use scheme in King’s Cross. Due to complete in early 2021, the office-led scheme will be home to one of three new office bases for Facebook, and also features a 600 seat theatre and flexible retail units at ground floor.
As we look forward to another year in practice, we’d like to wish everyone a happy and productive 2019. In case you missed it, here’s our review of 2018, in which we look back at projects new and completed, awards celebrated, plans consented, and all of the other things – and people – that make our practice what it is.
Three riders from AHMM will be taking part in this year’s Club Peloton Cycle to MIPIM ride. Associate Director Robert Romanis, senior architect Paul Jones and architect Jazmin Rogers will be leaving London on 7 March to complete 1500km over six days, reaching Cannes in time for the MIPIM property conference, and AHMM is once again supporting all Club Peloton riders with sponsorship of snacks to sustain them along the route. The annual ride – completed by Cormac Farrelly, Lloyd Spencer and Oliver Dyson last year – raises money for charities including Coram, and this year 50% of funds raised by AHMM will be given to the Magpie Project, AHMM’s Charity of the Year for 2019. You can sponsor Robert, Paul or Jazmin on their Race Nation fundraising pages.