Allford Hall Monaghan Morris and Derwent London have delivered a complex urban jigsaw of theatre, retail, office space and a new public square above the Crossrail station at Tottenham Court Road. Isabel Allen charts the influences, aspirations and relationships that have shaped a self-assured solution for one of London’s most prominent sites.

Words
Isabel Allen
Photos
Timothy Soar

When Simon Allford gave a speech to mark his 100th day as RIBA President in December of last year, he quoted Alex Gordon, a distinguished Welsh architect who became president of the RIBA in 1971. Speaking at the 1972 RIBA conference, against a backdrop of deep recession, Gordon called for a culture of collaboration, telling his audience that progress “means more climbing on other people’s shoulders and less ad hoc originality.”

Some 50 years later, Allford holds him up as an inspiration, partly because “it’s the only presidential speech I’ve ever heard anybody mention” but also because it’s this philosophy that underpins Allford Hall Monaghan Morris (AHMM), the practice he co-founded with Jonathan Hall, Paul Monaghan and Peter Morris back in 1989. From the practice’s early days as new kids on the block, it has been preoccupied with the systematic collation and dissemination of experience and knowledge. It’s first publication was an indication of just how seriously it viewed the task. In lieu of the standard coffee table monograph, the practice produced an office manual; a how-to compendium of lessons learnt, a serious bid to prevent current and future employees – and any other interested parties – from reinventing every wheel.

It’s an approach that lends itself to long-terms relationships with trusted clients; an opportunity to build on, and develop, an on-going body of work. Soho Place, a newly completed £300m mixed-use development on the corner of Oxford Street and Charing Cross Road is a case in point. The project is the most recent milestone in a partnership with Derwent London that started with the redevelopment of Old Street’s Morelands buildings in 1995 and has spawned a succession of central London projects including the mixed-use Johnson Building in Hatton Garden, the conversion of Horseferry House in Victoria into Burberry’s HQ, the Tea Building in Shoreditch, the Stirling-shortlisted Angel Building and the White Collar Factory at Old Street roundabout.

Both AHMM and Derwent view the collaboration as an on-going investigation into the most effective means of delivering long-life, loose-fit, low-energy buildings – a phrase coined by Alex Gordon in that half century-old speech – and of unlocking the latent potential of underperforming or unresolved fragments of the city.

The Theatre fronts onto Soho Place, a newly created public plaza.

Left: View from Soho Square with St Patrick’s Church, a Grade II* listed building designed by John Kelly and built in 1866 in the foreground and Richard Seifert’s Centre Point, built in 1966, in the background. Right: The theatre and retail/commercial building viewed from Charing Cross Road.

Known unknowns

To describe the site now occupied by Soho Place as having been unresolved is something of an understatement. Its occupants, including the Astoria nightclub and former Crosse & Blackwell pickle factory, were locked in limbo, faced with the prospect of being bought by compulsory purchase order and demolished to make way for a remodelled Tottenham Court Road station entrance and vital ventilation equipment for the new Elizabeth Line.

Spotting an opportunity, Derwent purchased the Astoria in 2006. When the government sought to buy it back, Derwent’s Paul Williams made a proposal. Derwent would work up a planning application for the patch of land above the newly developed Tottenham Court Road station on the understanding that it would acquire the site once the infrastructure work was complete; a deal that de-risked the land purchase for Derwent whilst giving the government a guaranteed buyer, a fair price, and benefit of working with a single developer across a complicated site. Williams’ pitch was that this could provide a blueprint for developments across all Crossrail sites.

On the downside, it left Derwent, AHMM and engineer Arup with the challenge of working up major development proposals against a backdrop of an uncertain programme subject to the vagaries of Crossrail’s bumpy ride to fruition and an ever-changing political and regulatory context. More challenging still, it had to design a project to be built on top of an as yet unbuilt transport interchange at the point where the Elizabeth Line was to converge with the existing Central and Northern Lines. It also had to incorporate an associated set of structures above ground, including a vast vent tower for Crossrail, a remodelled entrance to Tottenham Court Road Station and an operational building for London Underground.

The team set about the task of establishing the broad-brush principles for the development and quantifying the known unknowns. As engineer for both the infrastructure works below ground and Derwent’s development above, Arup played a crucial role in establishing a structural and services strategy that would work for Transport for London and Crossrail, while establishing a grid of structural loading positions and capacities that would give Derwent and AHMM a framework against which to develop their plans. It helped that contractor Laing O’Rourke, who was engaged with the underground works, was subsequently appointed for the Soho Place project above ground.

Place and programme

As you might expect from a development that was in gestation for 16 years, the project has been through countless iterations. Its pivotal location, sandwiched between Soho, Oxford Street and Charing Cross Road, made it a prime spot for high-end retail and commercial space, while its position as part of the West End’s theatreland opened up the possibility of cultural use. An insalubrious alley, Sutton Row, ran through the centre of the site, ruling out the possibility of a single mega-development and linking Charing Cross Road to Soho Square. After working with Crossrail and Westminster City Council to develop a planning strategy, Derwent and AHMM landed on a scheme of two discrete buildings: No. 1 Soho Place, a ten-storey office and retail building to the north of Soho Place on the corner of Oxford Street and Charing Cross Road, and Nos 2 and 4 Soho Place, located to the south of Soho Place and containing the first new build West End theatre to open for 50 years, with offices above.

The site at the start of construction showing the Crossrail vent tower, London Underground operational building and the entrance to Tottenham Court Road station, all of which had to be incorporated into the designs.

Making a virtue out of necessity, the design team opted to set back the building line either side of Sutton Row to create a public plaza, freshly rebranded as Soho Place. The decision paid for itself in commercial terms. By way of a trade-off, Derwent secured consent to build a taller building, a deal that helped to make the sums stack up. For those who care about such things, it also bestowed the development with the honour of Soho’s first new street name for 72 years.

But the real benefit lay in the opening up of an unusually rich and varied set of neighbours: the Grade II* listed St Patrick’s Church designed by John Kelly and built between 1891 and 1893, Richard Seifert’s Centre Point built in 1966, and leafy Soho Square. In the rebranding of what was once a vomit-splattered rat run into a light-filled sociable space. And in the creation of a dignified civic setting for Derwent’s two new buildings. Rather than sitting side-by-side on the still less-than-charming Charing Cross Road, they sit in stately dialogue, facing each other across their very own public square.

No 1 Soho Place

No 1 Soho Place, to the north of the new public plaza and at the corner of Oxford Street and Charing Cross Road, could scarcely occupy a more prominent position. Early design ideas suggest an initial instinct to deliver a statement building to rival Seifert’s Centre point, just across the road. The most obviously eye-catching, a 2008 proposal for a tower of round-edged floorplates stacked at offset angles and set back from a translucent façade to give the impression of a precarious tower of plates that could topple over at any moment, was worked up as a straw man, demonstrating to Crossrail that a tower was not a viable solution for the site. The planners’ response was a crisp “nice, but not here”.

The finished product is rather more sedate. Sheathed in a grid of metal channels infilled with a studied composition of perforated lattices, glass and travertine stone, it exudes the sense of quality and craftsmanship you would expect from its prominent gateway location. The informed observer might spot a family resemblance to some of AHMM’s more recent work; the façade development draws heavily on lessons from the design of previous office buildings, including the White Collar Factory at Old Street or The Post Building on New Oxford Street.

Behind the scenes

A new theatre has risen from the ashes of Charing Cross Road's once-infamous Astoria venue. Theatre owner Nica Burns and Derwent CEO Paul Williams explains how theatricality and glamour has melded with AHMM's modern architecture to create a contemporary hub for the West End.

Or they may discern the overt nod to the studied muscularity of SOM’s early office architecture. AHMM is as diligent about documenting and studying the work of architects it admires as it is about learning from its own work. SOM’s Manufacturer’s Trust Company Building in New York, completed in 1954, is a precedent it returns to time and time again. Then again, they might not notice at all. In its form and expression, it bears the satisfying demeanour of a building that has always been right there.

Its quiet dignity belies the complexity of its internal programme; a three-dimensional Rubik’s Cube of interlocking volumes of transport infrastructure, 33,000 square feet of retail space spread over the basement, ground and first-floor levels, and some 191,000 square feet of office space. The top floors are contained in a distinct block, set back from the street and rotated on its axis to create long, tapered, terraces overlooking Charing Cross Road and Soho Place. Viewed from Soho Place, the effect is rather jaunty: a rooftop pavilion or perhaps the Rubik’s Cube in motion. Viewed from Oxford Street, both volumes are aligned; a full-height façade to match the grandeur of this major crossroads site.

The retail is accessed from the north side, making its postal address a none-too-shabby sounding Number 1 Oxford Street. The office space is accessed from the south, with a grand entrance on Soho Place leading to a generous double-height reception space and a view of the big architectural move, a red oxide-coloured steel-framed glazed central ‘kinetic core’ that contains scenic lifts, bringing natural light, animation, and through views of the city to every office floor. Designed to meet BREEAM Outstanding, the floor slabs are post tensioned to reduce the quantity of material used and allow soffits to be exposed to activate thermal mass, whilst high levels of fresh air are supplied through the floor. Openable windows enable natural ventilation, and workspace is designed with an emphasis on user comfort and wellbeing. Each office floor enjoys extensive views of the city, natural light and outdoor space, with south-facing balconies, generous terraces on the fifth, sixth and ninth floors and a communal roof terrace.

Plans and section through both buildings and Soho Place showing the extent of the transport infrastructure below ground.

Lined in delicate ribbed concrete, Dinesen oak and a polished travertine reception desk, the foyer evokes the proportions and materials of Giuseppe Terragni’s Casa del Fascio di Como completed in 1936, and signals a world of hushed tones, high finance and secret deals. And a level of bespoke luxury that seems at odds with the Derwent/AHMM mantra of long-life, loose-fit, low-energy buildings. Allford is quick to dismiss this as a false dichotomy, arguing that a) the key to building efficiently is to maximise the amount of construction work carried out in controlled conditions off site; b) the most effective means of delivering low energy buildings is to design interior spaces that users understand as finished objects – “a forever architecture where nothing need be added and nothing can be taken away” – hence breaking the carbon-hungry cycle of fit-outs and refits; and c) while we have a responsibility to design buildings that future generations will be able to adapt, this shouldn’t be at the expense of the pursuit of beauty and delight: no-one bothers to adapt a building that isn’t loved.

2/4 Soho Place

Number 2/4 Soho Place, to the south of the public plaza, is a nine-storey building in two parts. The upper part of the building, 2 Soho Place, is a setback three-storey volume containing 18,000 square feet of independent office space with a generous terrace and sweeping views of the city, and accessed by a 52-person ‘superlift’ conceived as a vertically moving room with warehouse style doors.

The lower part of the building contains five storeys of theatre – including an auditorium, rehearsal studio, crush bars, green room, back-of-house facilities, technical gallery, offices, rehearsal room and club – above a publicly accessible ground floor containing a restaurant and bar. Keenly aware that a theatre represented a marked departure from their areas of expertise, Derwent joined forces with celebrated producer and theatre owner Nica Burns, whose Nimax group already co-owned six major theatres including the Vaudeville, the Palace and the Apollo. The unlikely pairing of superstar impresario and corporate developer was not without its complications. As Burns puts it: “We had to learn to speak each other’s language. Theatre people talk about dreaming. Developers don’t tend to talk in dreams.”

In a bid to bridge the gap, Allford encouraged Burns to attend every design meeting, championing her very particular dream of a celebratory space steeped in spectacle, but also bringing a thorough, and invaluable, understanding of the practical and commercial requirements of successful theatre design and the behavioural idiosyncrasies of audiences, actors and staff. If it sometimes made life more difficult Williams is in no doubt about the value of her input: “We would have built a theatre without Nica, but we would have built the wrong theatre. The day we were introduced to Nica was a very lucky day.” What has been built is what Allford describes as “undoubtedly the most complex and delightful project I have ever worked on: the highly engineered architecture and design of a Swiss watch but built on an urban scale.” Conceived as a grand room within the city, the project is simultaneously a state-of-the-art theatre and a contemporary take on old-school show-biz glitz.

An intimate 600-seat auditorium, designed in collaboration with auditorium architect Haworth Tompkins, theatre consultant Charcoalblue and acoustician Arup, is located on the first to fourth floors, freeing up the ground floor for a public restaurant and bar, with back of house facilities clustered to the south. The auditorium is wrapped to the north and east by galleries and interval bars, putting punters firmly on show as part of the theatre of the street.

A 2008 proposal for a high-rise building of round-edged floorplates stacked at offset angles and set back from a translucent façade was worked up to demonstrate to Crossrail that a tower was not particularly efficient and unlikely to be acceptable in planning terms.

The opening show, Marvellous, is being staged in the round, but the design can accommodate several configurations, the one constant being that each seat in the house enjoys ample legroom, unimpeded sightlines and great acoustics. This last, in particular, is no mean feat given the proximity of Crossrail’s vast extraction fans adjacent to the auditorium, and the Elizabeth Line, the Central Line and the Northern Line immediately below. An on-site rehearsal room – an unimaginable luxury in central London – sits adjacent to the Green Room on Level 5 and replicates the footprint of the auditorium stage. A ‘box within a box’, it is structurally and acoustically independent from the surrounding building which is, in turn, a distinct structure from the auditorium itself. This arrangement allows the rehearsal room to be used for public events with audiences of up to 100, even when the auditorium is in use.

Dressing rooms are located to the south of the building, where they benefit from daylight, sunshine and city views – a far cry from the cramped conditions typical of the West End. Starlet-style bulb-framed mirrors line the walls and perforated pin board cladding allows actors to personalise their workstations for the duration of their run. Actors relax in their own top floor clubroom complete with open air terrace and its own bar, appropriately christened ‘Nica’s bar’. The vibe is part High Camp, part Hollywood with ‘Hello darlings’ and ‘Nica’s bar’ inscribed in candy floss-pink neon lights.

If this sounds like an unlikely match for AHMM’s particular brand of modernist restraint, it’s nothing compared to the front of house. Burns wanted to evoke the wonder of a childhood visit to the theatre at Epidaurus in Greece, where performances take place under the night sky, recalling how she “was standing on the stage of this great ancient theatre as the last rays of a golden sun were coming through the trees and the starts were twinkling in an indigo sky.” Allford rose to the challenge, saying he’s always wondered “why can’t modern architecture be glamourous and luxurious? Why does it have to be so grey?”

Accordingly, the midnight blue interiors, which flow from the common parts into the auditorium, boast a lavish palette of backlit Covelano Crema marble, blue velvet, golden metalwork, and Lemurian labradorite, a sumptuous deep blue stone pocked with inclusions of pearlescence that seem to disappear and reappear as they capture and deflect the light. Star constellations etched out in illuminated crystals add a finishing touch.

The 602 seat auditorium, designed in collaboration with AHMM by HaworthTompkins and Charcoalblue, offers perfect sightlines from every seat and can be configured in steep or shallow versions of ‘in the round’, ‘long thrust’ or ‘short thrust’.

For Burns, it’s all part of the dream; a splash of glamour to support her aim of encouraging new and diverse audiences to her shows: “Theatre is about magic” she says firmly. “Let’s make this a magic place.” Williams acknowledges that Nica’s theatre has had a positive influence on his ability to pre-let or pre-sell office space at record rates. True to form, Allford cites the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University Library by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill completed in 1963 as a precedent for a happy marriage of modern architecture and high-octane glamour. Shared language, of a sort.

Elusive alchemy

These different perspectives are what makes the project sing. Successful collaboration is about protocols and processes and paperwork. And one can only begin to guess at the level of bureaucratic, legal and organisational challenges that underpin a project of this complexity and scale. It’s about learning from past experience and putting together the right players. AHMM and Derwent are old hands at this game. Their shared commitment to steady learning rather than ‘ad hoc originality’ allows their collaborations to grow steadily more ambitious and more assured. But it’s also about the elusive alchemy that defines a successful team. About shared conversations, pooled experiences, unexpected connections, different dreams.

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