Palmerston Court reached its highest point in May with a topping out ceremony held on site with the client, Urbanest and fellow project team members including AHMM.
Located opposite the new Battersea Power Station development, Palmerston Court is a highly sustainable development including carefully designed student accommodation targeting PassivHaus accreditation and a new commercial building targeting BREEAM Outstanding. Acting as a gateway building at the northern edge of the wider masterplan for Battersea's new Design and Tech quarter, the development's bold colours and glazed terracotta facades draw on the industrial heritage of the site.
Enabling works and demolition concluded at the Brain Yard site in July with the main construction work commencing in the summer.
Brain Yard reinvents and extends three buildings in the Hatton Garden conservation area in Bloomsbury, London, to create 14 new apartments alongside 85,000 square feet of workplace and retail space. The new scheme adapts, transforms and sensitively retains much of the existing fabric to preserve its historic character and provide substantial savings on the projects embodied carbon. Extensive use of temporary works facilitate this complex retrofit and refurbishment of a Victorian warehouse within a constrained inner-city site, reusing existing fabric including the shopfront facades of 160-164 Gray’s Inn Road.
The project is due to complete at the beginning of 2026.
In August Multiplex was appointed as the main contractor for 76 Upper Ground.
Designed by Sir Denys Lasdun and completed in 1983 as an office and client marketing building for IBM, the building no longer meets modern-day occupier requirements. AHMM’s proposals sensitively remodel, refurbish, and extend the Grade II listed building delivering 300,000 square feet of flexible and highly sustainable office space with 50,000 square feet of outdoor terraces providing occupants panoramic river views.
Delivered with developer Stanhope, the scheme will create a new pedestrian focused entry sequence in place of the first floor car drop off, retain the existing iconic buildings structure and façade and provide a long-term future for the building, greatly improving and enhancing its setting within the South Bank conservation area. With exceptional sustainability targets, the building will become a noteworthy example of low carbon office design, with a commitment to achieving Net Zero Carbon in both construction and operation. Targeting BREEAM Outstanding certification, the proposals maximise off-site fabrication of key building elements such as façade and MEP systems to minimise waste onsite, prioritise the procurement of re-used steel and incorporates biophilic landscaping within the terraces, enhancing the connection to nature.
Works have started on site, with completion set for Q4 2024.
In October the Metropolis team celebrated the topping out of the building at a ceremony on site, with clients General Projects and Henderson Park Capital partners, and the project team.
The scheme extends and refurbishes the nine-storey Woolworth House on Marylebone Road, originally designed by Richard Seifert in 1955 as the UK headquarters of the US retailer F.W. Woolworth. Through carefully considered interventions, the proposals create over 174,000 square feet of office space, with external amenity space on every floor, alongside a stepped courtyard extension and rooftop office pavilions on level 8 and level 5 respectively. A central atrium space provides several internal amenity and break-out areas and supplies natural daylight deeper into the plan.
The design employs a low embodied carbon approach, with the majority of the existing building fabric being retained, including the load-bearing masonry facades, concrete frame, and masonry cores. The extension areas are being constructed from a lightweight steel and CLT hybrid.
The project is due to complete in summer 2024.
Main contractors MACE officially broke ground at Belgrove House site in Camden in October. A ceremony was held, attended by the client, Precis Advisory, Camden Councillors, key partners, and project team members. The group then relocated to the old Camden Town Hall for a discussion on how investment in science can help save and improve lives around the world. Faaiza A.Lalji, Director of Planning and Development at Precis Advisory gave opening remarks followed by key remarks from Terry Spraggett, Managing Director – Public Estates, Research, Education, Arts and Culture and Health Care (PREACH) at Mace, Dr Angela Kukula, CEO of Medcity and closing remarks from Dean Y.Li, Executive Vice President of Merck Research Laboratories and Ben Lucas, managing Director at MSD UK. This was followed by a panel discussion which included AHMM’s Simon Allford, Darren McKerrecher, Executive Director and Head of Chemistry at MSD, Alex Neal, Partner at Gerald Eve, Jo Paisani, Board member at London & Partners and was chaired by Robert Gordon Clark, Partner and Senior Advisor at London Communications Agency. The discussion centred on the importance of innovative buildings and investment in sustainable infrastructure, combining to bring facilities of global note to central London.
Located on Euston Road opposite King’s Cross and St Pancras stations, Belgrove House is a new-build specialised laboratory and office building for the life-sciences sector to be occupied by MSD as a UK Discovery Research Centre and HQ. The scheme is designed to be innovative, highly sustainable and an example of carbon emissions reduction in construction, operation and future refurbishment. The building’s configuration emerges from a clear arrangement of uses on the site. Life-sciences research laboratories are located on the largest floorplates at floors 1-3, providing animation to the facades and a public window into the research activity within, whilst offices will be located on floors 5-9 and the fourth floor will serve as a dedicated ‘collaboration hub’.
In October The Citizen team in Oklahoma City celebrated the topping out of the building at a ceremony on site with client JRB Citizen LLC and the project team.
Situated on a sensitive site overlooking the Oklahoma City National Memorial, the new 12-storey building will deliver 175,000 square feet of workplace with restaurant and banking hall uses at ground floor which will enliven the streetscape. The elevations are inspired by neighbouring 1930’s architecture, and the detailing is an abstraction of their characteristic paired window arrangements and strong vertical emphasis. The generous openings are designed with flexibility in mind, accommodating the disparate functions envisaged now, but also with the ability to flex to different uses in the future. With its well-mannered exterior, and its offering of mixed public and private functions, the building itself is conceived as a citizen of the city.
The project is due to complete in 2024.
In November 1 Riva Row broke ground in the heart of the Woodlands, Texas.
Developed for The Howard Hughes Corporation, this new build multi-family development will create 269 new homes on the banks of the Waterway, the connecting lifeblood of the city. In response to the site the massing consists of two distinct elements; a four-storey component, more domestic in scale and a fourteen-storey tower which addresses the prominent corner location. A gradual gradation of brick colours across the building provides a playful façade which reflects the rich history of brick production in Texas.
The project is due to complete in December 2025.
The Arc is a new mixed-use building in east London, delivering new retail opportunities, office floorspace and 100 new homes, landscaped roof terraces and a new area of public realm onto City Road for our clients Ghelamco.
The building is inspired by early 19th century New York towers with three stages of tiered massing in response to the surrounding context heights and Conservation Areas. There is consistent treatment of the façade materiality across the building with vertically expressed brick piers and a horizontal concrete banding wrapping the building. This treatment relates to the adjacent Victorian warehouse aesthetics and is accented by the use of glazed brickwork in the first two levels.
Levels one to six comprise the office component of the scheme providing 145,000 square feet of office floorspace. Above the office, at Level 07, the building steps back to form a slender element which contains the residential accommodation. The set-back also generates a large, landscaped roof terrace with accompanying residents lounge.
Coming into its final phase of construction the cladding is now complete and the final works being made to the interiors by the interior architects Bowler James Bridley.
The project is due to complete Summer 2024.
Construction at Carrington Street continues to progress. The mixed-use scheme replaces three separate buildings located at the southern end of Carrington Street, in the heart of Mayfair. The new development includes an eight storey office block with a gym, art gallery, bike store and below parking, together with a seven storey residential block with a double height reception.
The brick curtain walling facades are almost completed with the stone façade starting and scaffolding expected to go down early 2024. The interior fit-outs are in progress, with the show flat expected to be completed mid 2024.
The project is due to complete in November 2024.
Currently in stage 5 construction, 1 Broadgate continues to progress at pace. Located in the southern part of the Broadgate campus in the City of London, the new building provides flexible accommodation of a mix of uses including 375,000 square feet of retail space arranged around a new retail arcade over two levels, and 500,000 square feet of new office space above.
The 15m deep basement and concrete cores were completed earlier this year. The steel frame is due to reach roof level by the end of the year with the concrete decking following closely behind. The first cladding panels will be installed in late January next year.
The twelve floors of office are all fully pre-let with one tenant fit out design approaching. The two levels of retail arcade are beginning to take shape, giving a preview of future routes through from Liverpool Street Station to Finsbury Avenue Square.
The project is due to reach PC in late summer 2025.
Taxi House is now on site and due for completion in 2025. This collection of buildings designed around a new public space which opens out to the canal will accommodate 332 co-living dwellings and extensive amenity space including a spa with swimming pool, waterside restaurant, a boutique cinema room, games space and various co-working zones and maker spaces.
The WCC Depot Cleaning Department, which required parts of the main facade to Woodfield Road to be watertight, has just been handed over. Demolition of the old Depot has started, which will allow the rest of the Woodfield Road structure to commence. The main structure is up Level 5 with the Tower due to be completed up to Level 11/12 by March 2024.
Following the demise of Debenhams during the pandemic, AHMM won the job from our client, Ramsbury to redevelop the site. The project is a 32,500 sqm mixed use scheme with a mixture of retention and new build, wrapped by a new unitised aluminium façade and includes three new storeys on top complete with planted terraces. The scheme re-provides retail uses at basement, ground and first floors in combination with office uses at upper levels.
AHMM is currently working through Stage 5 and is novated to the main contractor, Lendlease. On site currently, the demolition is complete, and Keltbray have almost completed the new basement to the north of the site along with the new cores up to 9th floor level. Structural steel from Severfield is due on site in January, and façade install from Scheldebouw will commence in July 2024. AHMM will work closely with Lendlease to achieve an accelerated construction programme, with practical completion targeted for November 2025.