Fletcher Priest Architects

28 Jul 2017
Art Night
More than 3000 people visited the White Chapel Building, our building for Derwent London, on Art Night to experience artist Lawrence Lek’s virtual reality installation Play Station. Set in 2037, Play Station imagines the building as the headquarters for a fictional tech start-up called Farsight.

Lawrence Lek’s virtual reality installation Play Station:

picture courtesy of architects

Employees of this mysterious corporation are encouraged to outsource their jobs to robots and are rewarded with entertainment and e holidays. Lek, who studied at the Architectural Association, is fascinated by the relationship between property, economics and architecture.

FPA Olympic Legacy
FPA are gearing up to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the 2012 London Olympics, in which the practice led the masterplan for the Olympic Village for more than a decade, before, during and after the games. The area has been transformed into a family-friendly neighbourhood now called East Village.

Axis Square set to transform central Birmingham

picture courtesy of architects
FPA proposals for four new office buildings arranged around a new public square on the Axis site in Birmingham has received outline planning permission: Birmingham Architecture News

Design on The Clubhouse Bank
A new branch of The Clubhouse designed by FPA will open at Angel Court in October. The Clubhouse was set up by Adam Blaskey in 2012 and offers meeting spaces for a range of businesses as an alternative to using coffee shops and hotel lobbies. The Clubhouse Bank will be located on the seventh and eighth floors of Angel Court – which we recently completed for Mitsui Fudson and Stanhope – with access to a private roof terrace and a shared roof garden.

Fletcher Priest staff news
Marco Montariello has become Associate Partner. Marco joined Fletcher Priest in 2000 and is leading work at Buckingham Green and K1.

FPA also announce that Nick Worley, Associate architect for the recently completed Angel Court, and Stina Hokby, who leads major urban design projects such as Waterbeach, have become Senior Associates.
The practice is proud that unusually for the architecture profession, 50% of staff in the London office are women. Recently Francesca Gernone (Partner and Head of Interiors), Stina Hokby and Sara L’Esperance were nominated as ‘Inspiring Women’, New London Architecture’s programme to encourage diversity, while Elena Weale is the firm’s NLA Next Generation representative.

30 Jun 2017
Memory Cloud at London Festival of Architecture’s Open Studios

photograph courtesy of architects

This month as part of London Festival of Architecture’s Open Studios, FPA welcomed more than 140 visitors to their Fitzrovia office. The centrepiece of the event was a collective Memory Cloud, an installation of visitors’ drawings that grew over two days, inspired by the images, shapes and ideas they remembered from their visit. Displays featuring models, prototypes, materials and drawings drew a great response from the public.

Fletcher Priest Architects Interiors

Interior of The White Chapel Building:

photo : Fletcher Priest / Hufton + Crow

A new book about FPA’s Interiors work has just been published. Highlighting 28 projects across a range of sectors, the book is illustrated with drawings by the FPA Interiors team and conveys their design approach of ‘practical dreaming’. One of the key projects featured is the White Chapel Building, commissioned by Derwent London. FPA recently hosted 60 visitors for a British Council of Offices tour focusing on the first completed phase of work and the practice’s vision for the development of the cavernous basement. The project also features on the cover of a recently launched BCO report on the future of office receptions, available for members to download. On Saturday 1 July, artist Lawrence Lek will respond to its architecture with an installation, Playstation, as part of Art Night.

Chatham House first phase complete

FPA are delighted to be working with the world’s leading foreign policy institute, Chatham House, to design a masterplan for its historic headquarters on St James’s Square, London. Earlier this month, HRH Prince Harry opened the first phase, a suite of rooms – the Stravros Niarchos Foundation Floor – which includes a media centre, training and meeting rooms and a unique simulation centre for testing response tactics for international negotiations and emergencies. For the opening a mock exercise took place where participants examined response tactics for a humanitarian emergency in Angola involving the clearing of landmines.

Angel Court, City of London

German magazine, BauNetz, has described FPA’s newly completed Angel Court as a ‘mirror for the clouds’. Completed for Mitsui Fudosan and Stanhope in January, the building recently set the rental record for City offices according to a report from Savills. At ground level restaurants COYA and Notes have already opened, and Neil Rankin’s highly acclaimed Temper will soon join them. Next month tenants including Bupa and Shanghai Pudong Development Bank will move in to the building, which was Highly Commended as 2017 City of London Building of the Year. There will be a chance for the public to see inside and experience its 7th floor garden room during September’s annual Open House London.

27 May 2017
Angel Court, City of London Tower, London, UK
How to build an ‘unobtrusive’ tower in the city of London, covered in gardens

photo © Edmund Sumner
Angel Court, City of London Tower
Replacing all but the core of a 25 storey 1970s tower in the Bank of England Conservation Area created the opportunity to increase and improve the neighbourhood’s public urban space as well as providing over 60% additional high quality office space within a prominent building.

10 Mar 2017
Fletcher Priest named Office Architect of the Year 2017, UK

Fletcher Priest is delighted to announce that we have been named Office Architect of the Year at the BD Architect of the Year Awards.

Our designs for offices often catalyse change for the organisations who occupy them. In recent years we have honed our approach to the workplace, having designed headquarters for some of the world’s most pioneering companies.

The practice’s approach benefits from the combined skills of our specialised groups in Urban design, Architecture, Interiors and Research. We aim to design workplaces that will be enjoyed by their occupants and make a contribution to the life of the city.

The architects practice would like to thank everyone we have worked with, particularly our clients and collaborators.

Fletcher Priest Architects – Recent Buildings

Piccadilly Circus Island Site Development, London, England, UK

image from architects
Piccadilly Circus Island Site Development by Fletcher Priest – 18 Mar 2016
Fletcher Priest Architects (FPA) has won planning permission for a scheme to revive one of London’s most idiosyncratic and popular locations – the urban quarter that is home to the Piccadilly Lights and the historic Rainbow Corner. The 24-hour city block borders Piccadilly Circus, Shaftesbury Avenue’s Theatreland and Soho’s Denman Street and attracts 100m people a year. FPA’s proposal lightly envelops the site with a folding geometric skin of ceramic tiles, and creates a roof-top landscape of creative workspaces that open onto terraces with breath-taking views across central London.

Carmelite Riverside, London, UK

picture © Fletcher Priest Architects and Miller Hare
Carmelite Riverside – 18 Jan 2013
FPA has started on site at Carmelite, the 135,000 sqft refurbishment at 50 Victoria Embankment. The multi million pound project includes a new riverside façade which responds to the adjacent Grade II Listed building.

Royal Mail Group Building, London, UK

picture © Cityscape and FPA
Royal Mail Group Paddington – 7 Nov 2012
Royal Mail Group have been granted planning permission by Westminster City Council for a major mixed-use re-development of the Royal Mail site alongside Paddington Station. Designed by Fletcher Priest Architects the project includes 129 apartments and 100,000 ft² of office space with restaurants and shops at street level.

6 Bevis Marks, London, UK

picture © FPA
6 Bevis Marks – 17 Feb 2012
170,000 sq ft speculative office scheme set for completion in September 2013. AXA Real Estate Investment Managers (“AXA Real Estate”), the leading real estate portfolio and asset manager in Europe*, with over €42 billion of assets under management as at December 2011, in partnership with private equity real estate investment advisory company MGPA, announce that they have appointed Skanska to commence construction on 6 Bevis Marks, the major new 170,000 sq ft office development in the City of London.