2013

Planning Consent for Barts Square

8th October

Sheppard Robson, Maccreanor Lavington and Piercy&Company have revealed detailed façade designs for buildings located within Barts Square - a new urban 3.2 acre mixed-use quarter in the City of London's Smithfield Conservation Area. Planning consent for these elevations has just been confirmed.

Piercy&Company, responsible for the façade designs of two buildings – one residential and the other residential with ground-floor retail – paid careful attention to detailing and materiality.

Facing onto Middlesex Passage, Building NBC3 ranges from three to five storeys; its design referencing London’s mews houses with a soft material palette and generous bays. Despite the strong vertical grid, the building reads horizontally due to the subtle cast masonry stringers and sills that distinguish each floor level.

Building LB123 faces the cloister of St Bartholomew-the-Great. In response, Piercy&Company referenced the variation of coarse and fine grain of the church to create a contemporary interpretation of a decorated classical building. The building base provides larger openings for retail, progressing to a middle order formed of a simple grid of openings for the apartments, before concluding in a setback storey differentiated by a change to the material palette.

Piercy&Company became interested in the history of lace making associated with the church and responded by developing a bespoke white-glazed ceramic tile cast with a bas-relief lace pattern. The tiles will line the window reveals of LB123, providing a fine detail in contrast with the building’s robust masonry.

Barts Square is expected to start on site January 2015.