2-14 Baker Street, Portland Square London, Building, News, Design, Property

2-14 Baker Street London : Portland Square Building

Development for McAleer & Rushe – design by Jestico + Whiles

30 Mar 2009

2-14 Baker Street

2-14 Baker Street, London secures planning

A spectacular new building by Jestico + Whiles for McAleer & Rushe has received planning permission. The mixed-use building will provide 16,000m² of office and retail space on a prominent site on Portland Square.

pictures from architects

The site is currently occupied by a 9 storey 1950s commercial building originally known as Berk House, tired and now largely redundant, it is soon to be demolished.

Each elevation is designed appropriately to local street context and scale. The perceived scale of the building is broken down into smaller constituent elements, each of them individually enriched with high quality materials such as stone, bronzed metal and glass. At ground floor level, the double-height office entrance is on the corner, where it addresses Portman Square. This entrance is recessed to create a covered external lobby area, which given its prominent location on the corner of the square, will be an appropriate location for a public art piece. The ground floor also provides 1,000m² of high quality retail frontage.

At basement level, there is further retail and office space, 124 cycle spaces together with ancillary shower and changing facilities, and plant.

The uppermost level is setback to correspond with adjacent parapet and rooflines along Baker Street. This level will be glazed on all sides to provide a perceived ‘lighter’ top to the building, offering a different working environment to the lower levels with a generous external perimeter terrace overlooking Marylebone. The roof of the pavilion is curved to create a ‘plant well’ concealing all the mechanical plant equipment at high level. This curved roof then slopes discretely down to the rear at Baker’s Mews.

In order to reduce CO2 emissions beyond the minimum Part L requirements a number of measures will be taken to improve the services and fabric of the building. A combination of renewable energy sources will be employed including ground source heat pumps and a rooftop array of photovoltaics.

Client McAleer and Rushe Group

2-14 Baker Street, London building images / information from Jestico + Whiles 300309

Jestico + Whiles

McAleer & Rushe Group
Established in 1967 by founder and current Chairman Seamus Mc Aleer, the McAleer & Rushe Group is a leading Irish property development and investment company with expertise in design and build construction. They are specialists in high density mixed use schemes with a current development programme of £500m extending to 1.75m sq.ft for projects located in London, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Sheffield, Nottingham, Derby, Swindon, Southampton, Exeter, Plymouth, Belfast and Dublin. Future development projects include schemes in Glasgow, Newcastle Upon Tyne, Gateshead, Leeds, Bradford, Preston, Manchester, Portsmouth, Bournemouth, Brighton, London and Belfast.

They are market leaders in the design and construction of hotels having completed over 30 hotel buildings and in the region of 8,000 bedrooms in the UK and Ireland over the last 15 years. During this time they have built an enviable reputation for delivering high quality projects on time and within budget.

Location: Portland Square, Marylebone, London, England, UK