AT Awards Hospitality and leisure Winner: The Standard by Orms Architects

John McRae from Orms, client Matt Mason and AT Awards judges Lee Mallett, Farshid Moussavi, Isabel Allen and Catherine Croft discuss the bold conversion of the former Camden Town Hall Annexe and the challenges involved in transforming a brutalist white elephant into a much-loved London landmark. Photographer Timothy Soar captures the project as it is today.

Completed
2019
Photos
Timothy Soar

This transformation of London’s 1970s Camden Town Hall Annexe opposite St Pancras Station into a contemporary hotel retains 94 per cent of the existing structure, capturing 5,773 tC0₂e of embodied carbon.

The façades have been cleaned, windows replaced, and where possible, finishes pared back to expose the original structure, such as the waffle slab ceilings. Measures to improve performance in use include retrofitted insulation, low-energy lighting, ventilation, heating and cooling, heat recovery, greywater recycling, and a blue roof.

New additions allow for future flexibility. As part of the fit-out by David Archer of Archer Humphryes, lightweight partitions can be moved to accommodate larger or smaller rooms, or removed to create open-plan office space. The rooftop extension is a lightweight structure that can be easily adapted or removed. An external capsule lift lends a cheery note to the austere 1970s façade.

John McRae, architect The original building was designed by Camden’s own in-house architects, who were heavily influenced by The International Press Centre on Shoe Lane designed by Richard Seifert between 1968 and 1975.At the time, it was ridiculed in the architectural press as being a poor copy of the Seifert building. Also, Camden had real problems transferring people from the town hall to the west of the main building into the annexe and a lot of employees refused to move.

Matt Mason, client, Crosstree Real Estate Partners The building lies within a conservation area, but was listed as a negative contributor to that conservation area. However, when we started to discuss the building with locals, especially those to the south of the site, everybody seemed to love it. So we went to the Twentieth Century Society, the Design South East Review Panel and Edwin Heathcote to help us make a case for retaining it, which we felt was the right thing to do – not just for our use but also for the local residents and of course from a sustainability point of view.

View looking north from Whidborne Street. The addition of the rooftop crown gives the composition a verticality that sits happily between St Pancras clock tower and the domestic scale of the residential streets to the south.

Farshid Moussavi The project has transformed the original building into a landmark and given it a larger scale, which is more in tune with the neighbouring Victorian structures. It’s reminiscent of a cathedral building.

John McRae The building was delivered in a period of monumental innovation – Concorde conducted its first commercial flight; Apple launched its first computer – but it had reached a major milestone in its lifetime. As with everyone who reaches their mid 40s, you can evolve elegantly, or you might descend into a mid-life crisis. However, we saw a real opportunity to reinvent the building, giving it a new lease of life and making it a major London landmark.

Lee Mallett In the three years since completion, the The Standard’s colourful conversion – which projects a warm, yet very cool, 70s vibe – and rooftop extension, have made it a firm favourite in the capital’s ferociously competitive hospitality stakes.

The 10th floor is occupied by a sprawling restaurant and opulent bar. Changes in floor level help to create intimate spaces despite the generous floor-to-ceiling height.

Isabel Allen It’s an astonishing turnaround – to transform a building that was brutal, verging on aggressive, into one that makes passers-by smile. For visitors emerging from St Pancras and Kings Cross it’s one of the few indications that there’s a world worth exploring to the south of Euston Road.

Matt Mason One of the concerns we had about The Standard when we bought the building was that it would be perceived as a terminus hotel. It’s not defined by the fact that it’s opposite three train stations, it’s defined by the fact that it’s regenerated part of Kings Cross and that southern part of Euston Road.

Catherine Croft, The Twentieth Century Society There is no denying the quality of what has been achieved. Hopefully it will become a benchmark for the effective retention and reimagining of many comparable buildings.