Metropolis extends and refurbishes the nine storey Woolworth House, an existing office building located in the Dorset Square Conservation Area in the City of Westminster.
Woolworth House was originally designed by Richard Seifert in 1955 as the UK headquarters of the US retailer F.W. Woolworth, and its construction was completed in 1959.
The mixed use scheme for client General Projects will create over 236,000 square feet GIA of office space across three distinct blocks at Marylebone Road, Harewood Avenue and Harewood Row. The scheme also includes a flexible retail/office unit on ground and lower ground floor, accessed from the corner between Harewood Avenue and Harewood Row.
The existing car park is replaced with a seven storey stepped extension clad in glazed terracotta with a cross laminated timber (CLT) frame and planted terraces on every level.
Above the Harewood Avenue and Harewood Row blocks, the existing roof plant enclosures are removed and consolidated, allowing the creation of rooftop office pavilions on level 8 and level 5 respectively.
Internally, a generous new office reception hub is accessed from Harewood Avenue, and a stepped atrium visually connects the reception with the upper floors, bringing additional daylight to the deepest office floor plates.
Metropolis benefits from over 20,000 square feet of amenity, including external terraces on every floor, several internal amenity and break-out areas, a high specification cycle store and associated facilities.
The scheme features very low embodied carbon as the majority of the existing building fabric - including masonry facades, concrete frame and cores– will be retained, and CLT will be used for all the new slabs forming the building extension. The amount of embodied carbon saved by retaining the existing fabric equals to 255t CO2.
