Breakers Place – Office Projects – Allford Hall Monaghan Morris

Ten years ago, AHMM’s landmark Yellow Building for Monsoon established the ambitions of the Notting Dale masterplan, repairing the historic grain along the edge of the West cross route with a set of lean warehouse workspaces. Breakers Place is the latest addition to this ongoing masterplan, building on these ambitions with a mix of commercial and residential development that recalls the area’s industrial heritage and is set within a series of public spaces enabling urban aspirations for broader connectivity and regeneration. A new urban square restitches these previous phases together into a coherent whole now known as Breakers Place. The George Building is conceived as two brick wings mediating between larger scale office developments and the finer grain of residential terraces. Externally, the building is faced in dark handset brickwork cut with bands of ribbon windows, while internally generous ceiling heights and a simple palette of exposed concrete, bricks and metalwork offers flexible, open workspaces. In contrast, the Frestonia Apartments residential building is defined as a light brickwork block, with generous terraces and gardens carved from the volume. Here the apartments are arranged around split-levels to create light-filled, characterful, double height living spaces.