Summary
An office building designed in 1980 and built in 1985 to the designs of Whitfield Partners with David Lyle as the partner in charge and David Walsh the project architect as a speculative office development for the Church Commissioners. The contractors were McAlpine.
Reasons for Designation
16-18 Connaught Place, a C20 office building by Whitfield Partners, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
Architectural interest:
* a work by the noted practice of William Whitfield and partners which demonstrates a sensitive reaction to a complicated site;
* a carefully detailed design, both in terms of the materials used and the quality of the individual features, including hand-crafted ironwork across the principal fronts and landscaping of the immediate surroundings.
Historic interest:
* as an impressive example of a later-C20 commercial building which makes an impact while also respecting its setting.
Group interest:
* with numbers 1-12 Connaught Place (Grade II), 9-10 Stanhope Place and 11-15 Stanhope Place (all Grade II).
History
The development of the area known as Tyburnia at the north-eastern corner of Hyde Park and close to the present site of Marble Arch began in 1807 with the laying out of Connaught Square and associated roads on what was then the Bishop of London's Paddington Estate. Connaught Place, the terrace of houses facing south over Bayswater Road and Hyde Park, was apparently the first to use a ‘back-to-front’ plan where houses were entered from the rear through a series of projecting, single-storey porches with classical detailing. The area plan drawn out by Samuel Pepys Cockerell around 1805 was supplemented by George Gutch in 1838. The part of the site to the rear of the terrace overlooking the park which is the subject of this case was initially known as Connaught Mews. The original pattern survived largely intact until the early C20 when leases started to fall in and piecemeal redevelopment caused alterations to the uniformity of the initial scheme. Bombing in the Second World War damaged the western end of the mews and destroyed buildings at its eastern end. Post-war development included a new group of houses with two storeys and attic at the eastern end of the mews site with a car park to the west. A screen of Ionic columns was built, forming a permeable barrier facing Edgware Road, which continued the theme of the classical porches along the north side of the terrace of houses facing Hyde Park.
The present development was the direct result of the ‘Lane plan’ for the Hyde Park Estate, drawn up by the former LCC planner Leslie Lane in 1972. This had a conservation bias and spoke of a 'thorough-going rehabilitation of those original buildings which are in a poor structural state'. The site of Connaught Mews was included in Lane's masterplan as an area for redevelopment as it then fell outside the Bayswater Conservation Area and was described as a ‘rundown mews’. The Church Commissioners decided on a scheme to adapt the early-C19 terrace for use by one or two corporate clients and to rebuild the mews site as a speculative office development. Two architectural firms were initially involved: Whitfield Partners and the Building Design Partnership (BDP) and their responsibilities evolved into the refurbishment and conversion of the C19 terrace by BDP and the design of the new office building by Whitfield Partners.
A model of the Whitfield building, stored on site, shows that an earlier scheme had included more brick cladding to the tower element of the design. It had originally been planned to retain and adapt the screen of classical pillars facing Edgware Road, but their replacement with the present arrangement of brick arches and steel railings was apparently due to cost.
Later alterations included a succession of planning applications for the addition of air conditioning plant on the roof. The use of Weldon stone as a dressing course along the top of the brick walls proved unsatisfactory due to water staining and it was altered to a covering of lead sheeting, similar to that on the oval lodge building, which was part of the original design. Other alterations have included a redesigned reception area and a bridge with glass balustrade and enforced glass walkway which crosses the area in front of the building on its south side. Presently (August 2023) a remodelling of part of the building is exposing the waffle-patterned concrete floor plates.
The building was sold in 1988 to Palmerston Holdings and divided into two. The parts were renamed Bain House (number 16) and Lex House (number 17). For the purposes of this List entry it is either called 16-18 Connaught Place or Oriel House.
Details
An office building designed in 1980 and built in 1985 to the designs of Whitfield Partners, with David Lyle as the partner in charge and David Walsh the project architect, as a speculative office development for the Church Commissioners. The contractors were McAlpine.
MATERIALS: concrete frame with concrete waffle-type floor plates. Facings are Hudson Bramber yellow multi-stock bricks with dressings of Weldon stone and Milton Hall red bricks for the segmental arches, with lead sheeting. Windows have aluminium frames. Decorative iron screens across the building and facing Edgware Road with area railings and lamp standards were forged from mild steel by the blacksmiths James Horrobin and Terrence Clark.
PLAN: the building is roughly E-shaped on plan with three projecting wings to its south side and a stepped outline to the north where the building meets the Victory Service Club, immediately to its north. The spinal range runs east-west and faces south across Connaught Place and is of four storeys. At the east end the building rises to a height of seven storeys to form a tower element facing onto Edgware Road. The building has a sunken basement floor with areas to the southern side and there is a courtyard garden at the west end, set at graduated levels and approached by a staircase. To the east of the main block is a single-storey lodge building which is oval on plan and connected to a screen wall with iron railings which divides Connaught Place from Edgware Road.
EXTERIOR: the combination of variegated brick walling laid in Flemish bond and plate glass windows, which project forward from the wall line as a series of oriels, is a theme of the building and forms a counterpoint with one texture or the other having prominence.
The south front has three projecting wings which form one of the distinctive features of the building and have prominent stretches of brickwork rising through their lower three storeys. Each wing projects out over the pavement forming a type of porch or porte cochère with segment-headed archways to three sides decorated with red brick dressings. These projecting bays die back via hipped lead roofs above the second floor. The south face of each has one wide bay with the arch to the ground floor and a single wide window above lighting the upper two floors. The widest of these wings is placed slightly to left of centre. The stone plinth at the base of the wall incorporates a stone bench to either side of the portal and inside the porch, above the glazed doors is a landing window with ironwork bars, reminiscent of a portcullis. This central feature is flanked by seven bays to its right and four bays to its left, each of which ranges is recessed and fronted by a basement area. The floor of the area in each case consists of metal grilles which allow light into the car parks at sub-basement level. The south wall of the area is rendered and includes a series of architectural niches with scribed horizontal lines in imitation of masonry which create the impression of a platform for the Georgian terrace opposite. The other three sides of the area have basement walling of battered brick and a series of oriel windows emerge from the slope of this brick walling and rise through the height of the building to second floor level where they die back via a glazed slope. The oriels have bronzed aluminium frames with dark and clear glass and a tripartite pattern of glazing bars. The walling between each bay is brown brick. Second floor windows are recessed. At the top of the second-floor walling is a continuous band of lead sheeting with an angled top. The third floor is slightly recessed and has a continuous line of glazing with clear and black panels. The roof is angled to its initial slope and flat above. The tower at the eastern end is stepped back from the brickwork below and rises for a further four floors with a projection to the south above the eastern brick wing, housing a staircase. Walls are clad in clear and black glass, mounted in bronzed aluminium frames and similar in appearance to the top floor of the range which runs east-west. Corners are angled and lead sheeting caps both the tower and the brick walls, with an angled roof to the outer edge of the tower, masking services.
The east front, facing Edgware Road, has brick walling to its lower three floors, as before. A canted section of wall projects at ground-floor level and has two, wide service entrances with splayed surrounds and a pedestrian doorway, all with metal doors and segmental, red-brick arches. This projection dies back via a hipped lead roof and a series of four oriels climb from first to fourth-floor level. The oriel windows and the curtain wall of the seven-storey tower above the lower three floors are clad in clear and black glass held in a bronzed aluminium armature, as before.
The west front has eight bays of metal-framed windows divided by brick piers to its lower walling. The basement is exposed on this side and there is a depth of four floors with a further attic floor, slightly recessed, with glazed walls above, as on the south front. A landscaped garden has been formed on this side, approached from he Connaught Place roadway down a flight of steps. The fall of the land at this lower level enabled the creation of terraces with raised beds and a fountain with basins and a miniature cascade, which have now been converted to planting troughs.
The north front, facing towards the Victory Service Club, has a projection at the right of centre which extends to the boundary wall and is blind. At either side the lower floors are masked by glazed roofs which also extend to the boundary wall and originally housed conservatories. Above this are three floors of brick walling with metal-framed windows with red brick heads and a recessed attic floor with glazed walling, as before.
INTERIOR: the reception area has been redesigned but retains wood panelling to the lift lobby which is also seen on other floors. The present café area, which was formerly a conservatory, has a design of projecting and recessed blonde wood panels to its corridor approach and east wall. Staircases appear to be in their original positions.
SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: the screen wall facing Edgware Road has a stone plinth and a series of five openings with segmental red brick heads and forged iron railings with notched heads, designed and made by James Horrobin and Terrence Clark. At the south end of this wall is the lodge which is oval on plan. This has a stone plinth and a stone flush band at the level of the window heads. The hipped, or conical, roof rises to a louvered vent at its centre. A pair of vertical slit windows faces west and a door with overlight faces north.
Further railings, handrails and lamp standards with glass globes were also designed and made by Horrobin and Clark for this specific site to shield and light the sunken areas on the south side of 16-18 Connaught Place and the sunken garden at the west end.
