Commercial Archives | Douglas and King Architects

An urban artifact for a key vista

Architect and Project Manager – Douglas and King Architects
Quantity Surveyor – Andrew Morton Associates
Clients Agent – John D Wood
Planning Consultant – BNP Paribas
Structural Engineer – Conisbee
MandE Engineers – Flatt
Agent – Stirling Ackroyd

Planning was granted for a proposed community resource building in 2020 following a design programme punctuated by series of pre app and community consultations led by the Architect. Design Management of a large team of consultants was fully managed by the Architect.

The plot is a void in the urban fabric, a vacant site on the main route between Islington and Hackney. The redundant site is at the end of a number of key vistas, on the boundary of two city boroughs, borders a well-known conservation area and is at the junction between two public places. To the East is the Tabernacle Square, a key public space on the route between Old Street Roundabout and the Shoreditch Triangle Conservation Area.

To the East is Tabernacle Square, an urban artefact on the route between Old Street Roundabout and the Shoreditch Triangle Conservation Area. To the North, the site forms part of the Shoreditch Gateway urban space, a public space that is defined by the new Art ‘Otel, the Shoreditch House residential tower and the new 10-storey Picture House that is part of our masterplan proposal for the route between Old Street Roundabout and the Shoreditch Triangle Conservation Area.

A contemporary response draws on the proportions of the historic terraces that neighbour the corner plot. Minimal detailing is balanced against a careful attention to texture and simple form to create a sculpted building that is a symbol of the maturity of Shoreditch.

Having successfully met the aspirations of our clients and of Hackney Council this project has been taken forward by another team who have redesigned the building for residential use.

The design team and delivery of this planning approval was led by Douglas and King Architects. For information on our processes read our blog on creative leadershio by CLICKING HERE

An architectural ‘bookend’ for Great Eastern Street

Architect and Project Manager – Douglas and King Architects

Clients Agent – John D Wood
Planning Consultant – BNP Paribas
Structural Engineer – Conisbee
MandE Engineers – Flatt
Agent – Sterling Ackroyd

Planning Permission for this BREEAM excellent, zero carbon ready, building was granted by Hackney Council in 2020. Design and Project Management was led by the Architect as part of a wider development for the Shoreditch Island Site.

The proposed new Picture House was designed as a workspace building located in Shoreditch, on the boundary between the boroughs of Islington and Hackney. The building has been designed to be an architectural ‘bookend’ for the western side of the Shoreditch Island masterplan.

Our vision for The Picture House created a 10-storey structure with a height of 40m. This is significantly lower than many of the existing and emerging high-rise developments in the nearby urban landscape of Old Street.

Following a realignment of the property market due to the 2021 pandemic along with other forces, following our sucessful appointment and achieving all the aspirations of our clients brief, this project has been taken forward by another team, redesigning the buildings in the masterplan in the hope of creating a new apart-hotel on the site along with other mixed uses.

The building has been designed to respond to three distinct scales:

The urban scale which is representative of the culture of the area
The local scale which is how the building is seen both from a distance and from its immediate context
The human scale – this is the scale of the street and the passing pedestrians

It’s slender form will be ‘split’ horizontally to respond to the level of the surrounding urban landscapes. Concrete piers and beams will frame glazed rectangular apertures that define the vertical and horizontal grid. These provide a depth to the façade and variable shading conditions at different times of the day. The density of the facade subtly decreases as it progresses upward through its vertical grid.

The architectural expression of the exterior is an intelligent response to the materiality and mutation of Shoreditch – as was, is now and could be in the future.

The site is divided into three building blocks, each of which respond to the different influences on the site: Titchfield House responds to the Shoreditch Warehouses to the South of the site and the immediate neighbours on Tabernacle Street. The existing townhouses are renovated and extended, and form the boundary of two important public squares. Picture House is a tall building that marks the boundary of Old Street and Shoreditch, combining the styles of both areas.

A historic street which ran through the site is recreated in a new courtyard that will provide a calm oasis just off the busy thoroughfare of Old Street. Ground floor retail and cafes will activate this space, making it a vibrant new destination.

The architectural language draws on the industrial heritage of Shoreditch, while also representing the modern culture of the area as a vibrant, creative and fringe area.

Douglas and King are currently working with Hackney Planning Department towards a planning application for this key scheme. See the blog for sketches, studies and updates to this project as it develops over the coming months.

The design team and delivery of this project is led by Douglas and King Architects. For information on our processes read our blog on creative leadershio by CLICKING HERE

A contemporary nod to Shoreditch’s architectural heritage

Architect and Project Manager – Douglas and King Architects
Clients Agent – John D Wood
Planning Consultant – BNP Paribas
Structural Engineer – Conisbee
MandE Engineers – Flatt
Agent – Sterling Ackroyd

Our vision for Titchfield House creates a BREEAM excellent mixed use building and was granted planning approval in 2020. Douglas and King Acted as Architect, Design Team and Project Manager. The design of Titchfield House draws on the area’s typical warehouse structures and is a contemporary nod to their character and inherent architectural legacy.

The design employs a pure architectural form in direct contrast to the outdated ‘70’s vernacular building it will replace: a utilitarian afterthought that neither harmonized or neutralized itself within it’s immediate urban context.

Its location is the corner of Tabernacle Street and Singer Street and the new building will strengthen and articulate these two streetscapes both in height and materiality.

At 5 storeys the building matches the existing parapet height of Tabernacle Street with a glazed recessed roofscape reflecting other typical Shoreditch sky space developments.

The new building’s façade was designed to be of a lightweight brick construction with deep reveals to emphasise the purity of the architecture. The interior will offer high quality working environments, flexible and affordable, aimed at SMEs, to compliment the city fringe businesses and the growth of Shoreditch’s tech hub.

Since the sucessful granting of approval for the building the clients brief has changed and the project has been taken forward by another team hoping to acheive an alternative use on the site.

The design team and delivery of this project was led by Douglas and King Architects. For information on our processes read our blog on creative leadership by CLICKING HERE

A triangle of place-making

Masterplan Shoreditch - A Triangle of Placemaking

Douglas and King undertook the development of a Master Plan and Urban Design Framework for a triangular island site in Shoreditch, bordered by Great Eastern Street (north), Singer Street (west), and Tabernacle Street (south-east).

The proposal re-introduced an historic street, creating a new public piazza, re-imagining two 19^th century terraces, designing three iconic new buildings which are responsive to their neighbours, and restoring a sense of place to a semi-derelict urban block within the South Shoreditch Conservation Area.

The masterplan drew upon the diversity, optimism, history, culture, and industrial heritage of this part of East London alongside the contemporary influences that now make Shoreditch one of the most successful urban regeneration programmes in Europe.

Shoreditch is an urban paradox that is both free-form and densely continuous: it is now hosts one of London’s most creative hubs. It is colourful, optimistic, characterful and its indigenous communities are a strong and vibrant part of this paradox. Those communities have lived through a period of decline, neglect, traffic driven interventions and those challenges have left a deep-rooted sense of self determination amidst much uncertainty.

Our goals were to enhance the historic fabric of Shoreditch, to express through architecture and conservation the area’s rich history, to mirror the multiplicity of its inhabitants and to protect this Triangle from the commercial hub that is centred round the Old Street Roundabout.

Whilst this project was very sucessful and all the aspirations of the clients brief were fully met, changing market conditions have led to a new design team being appointed to take the project forward with a new brief.

The design team and delivery of this project was led by Douglas and King Architects. For information on our processes read our blog on creative leadershio by CLICKING HERE

Place-making The Triangle

The Triangle Master Plan will re-introduce an historic street, offer new vistas and a new public recreational space. It will restore a terrace of historic townhouses and provide 70,000 square feet of new workspace, retail, and commercial accommodation. It will be characteristic of the local street boundaries and urban pattern and it will not be a private commercial development. In keeping with the success of Shoreditch’s regeneration progamme achieved so far, the aspirations of Reitman Yard hinge on the inspiration of the entrepreneurial community that will work, visit, and grow within it’s environment.

How we are doing it

The primary ordering strategy is the shape of the site and the interface it forms between Tabernacle Square/Great Eastern Street, Singer Street and Old Street. The secondary ordering strategy is the conservation and restoration of the existing historic terraces that form two sides of the Triangle. The third is the demolition of derelict plots and the re-creation of lost legacies. The fourth is a considered workplace strategy, and the fifth is the dialogue that the new architecture will have within the Triangle, with its immediate neighbours, and towards the urban character of the adjacent streets.

An open thoroughfare leading to and through a piazza will be at the heart of the development and is central to the intention that Reitman Yard lies wholly within the public realm. This will also act as a foyer to the inner facades of the buildings and a restful traffic-free backwater to the busy pedestrian and traffic routes in the immediate area. Contemporary landscaping will re-imagine St Agnes Well, and contribute moments of intensity and tranquillity. A social space will be defined through the connectivity of cultivation, streetscape and atmosphere

The Physical Assets

The Triangle Master Plan will create a new 10-storey Picture House to the west of the site that acts as an ‘expressive marker’ along the route from Islington to Hackney. The Picture House is the tallest element of the development and our intention is to reflect the typologies of the proposed multi-storey Art ‘Otel, (occupying a focal position opposite Tabernacle Square) and Shoreditch House (a residential tower), on the junction of Great Eastern Street and Pitfield Street.

The existing Titchfield House will be demolished and replaced with a new contemporary building of five storeys that, height-wise, aligns itself with the existing roof levels. It will converse in it’s 21^st century style with the architectural character of the 19^th century industrial buildings along Singer Street and Tabernacle Street.

95 Tabernacle Street is currently a void in the urban fabric of the site and is the most visible aspect of the development as its corner position is a key local node on a principal point of intersection. An iconic galleried building informs the extension and re-imagining of the two adjacent terraces of townhouses. These are to be re-designed to create front to back shops, an architectural intervention that will provide glimpses through to the life of Reitman Yard.

What it will be like

The Triangle Master Plan confidently and consistently reflects the strategy of LB Hackney for the South Shoreditch Conservation area. Each component or building can be designed individually in response to its immediate and neighbouring context.

The proposals for Picture House, Titchfield House and 95 Tabernacle Street are explained in more detail elsewhere on this website.