Barr Gazetas have tactfully edited a mock-Georgian office block in Marylebone through targeted, focussed interventions, upgrading the block to contemporary corporate needs whilst retaining it’s original features.
42 Wigmore Street occupies a constrained site in Marylebone, negotiating between heritage retention and contemporary workplace demands to reconsider the commercial office as a flexible and adaptive environment.
For Barr Gazetas, the project extends a preoccupation with retrofit as environmental strategy and architectural opportunity. The building sits within a dense urban context with a mix of period façades and contemporary interventions. The scheme adopts a surgical approach to retaining and enhancing the building’s original façade, while reconfiguring the interior to accommodate a more flexible, light-filled workplace.
Central to the intervention is the reorganisation of the plan to improve permeability and legibility. Circulation and shared spaces are threaded through the building to encourage interaction without compromising the need for quieter, focused work. The emphasis is on choice: a workplace not as a fixed arrangement but as a framework for supporting multiple modes of occupation. Light becomes a primary material in this recalibration. Opened-up floorplans and strategic interventions bring daylight deep into the plan, reducing reliance on artificial lighting while enhancing the overall quality of the interior environment.
This is complemented by a restrained material palette that favours tactility and durability. Opting for the retention and incremental upgrade of interiors, rather than wholesale replacement, adds more sustainability-points to the scheme. By working with the existing structure, the project minimises embodied carbon while extending the building’s operational life.
Interventions are targeted and focus on improving environmental performance and user wellbeing without erasing the building’s history. A deliberate softness to the interiors, shifts the language of the workplace away from corporate uniformity towards something more domestic and inhabitable. At 42 Wigmore Street, Barr Gazetas carefully edit an existing structure, upgrading its functions and extending its life. The result is a building operating quietly within its context, whilst offering a considered and contemporary model for the renewal of central London’s commercial buildings.
