Great Sutton Street

50–55 Great Sutton Street is the extension and refurbishment of a 1960s office building in the heart of Clerkenwell’s Hat and Feathers Conservation Area. The project sensitively upgrades the existing building, integrates improved external amenity spaces and adds a rooftop extension to create 72,225 sqft of revitalised office space, delivering significant embodied and operational carbon benefits.  

The plot spans an urban block with frontages to both Great Sutton and Northburgh Street. Originally a speculative late-modernist commercial building, it offered a rigorous facade rhythm, attractive internal details and light-filled, flexible floor plates - but poor construction methods, minimal thermal performance and subsequent modifications had left it incoherent and disconnected. The project was a process of rediscovering the building’s original spirit, visually and physically reconnecting interior and exterior spaces and creating a unified presence to both streets.

The rear elevation was carefully restored and paint removed to reveal the original deep green aggregate facade. The primary Great Sutton Street frontage was replaced with a gently sculptural GRC facade in tonal greens - a more expressive interpretation of the original modernist architecture. A lightweight rooftop pavilion with an elegantly scalloped metal facade provides additional office floorspace and external terraces with views across London.

Internally, strategic interventions - including the removal of an existing lift shaft and reconfigured stair connections - transformed internal circulation and spatial experience. A restrained material palette of retained concrete, clay plaster, timber linings and metal trims harmoniously introduces new elements while resonating with Clerkenwell’s robust warehouse character.