10 Hills Place London Office Building Photos, Project Design News, Property Image

10 Hills Place London

Office Building Development off Oxford Street design by Amanda Levete Architects

Design: AL_A

Work on 10 Hills Place is now complete.

photo : Gidon Fuehrer

10 Sep 2009

10 Hills Place

Amanda Levete Architects has harnessed high quality ship hull technology to create an ingenious sculptural facade for a new office building just off London’s Oxford Street.

Lack of daylight in the narrow streets around this major retail artery was a key issue. Inspired by the art work of Lucio Fontana AL_A slashed the aluminium skin with large glazed areas orientated towards the sky to maximise and channel natural light into the office space.

The facade is fabricated using curved aluminium profiles assembled on-site. Self cleaning glass and hidden gutters within the eyelids ensure the facade remains low maintenance. The fine faceting of the aluminium strips creates beautiful and complex reflections of sky and street, making the building highly visible from Oxford Street.

At ground level a bespoke glass, mesh and dichromatic film sandwich is animated with fibre optics to create visual depth of field and a dynamic moiré pattern on an otherwise blank facade.

photos : Gidon Fuehrer

10 Hills Place London image / information from Amanda Levete Architects

10 Hills Place – Project Description

Many narrow streets and alleyways off Oxford Street, London are currently misused and underdeveloped. These under regarded areas are ideal not only for improvement, but also for relatively unconventional design opportunities. Our proposal acknowledges this by providing an architectural intervention that subtly draws attention to the building through the intrigue of a sculptural façade. Inspired by the art work of Lucio Fontana large glazed areas orientated towards the sky are slashed into the façade, maximising the natural light available in this narrow street.

This sculptural form is achieved using a system of aluminium profiles used in the production of high quality, ship hulls. The facade is fabricated using curved 140mm wide aluminium profiles that are connected together on-site, using a tongue-and-groove system ensuring water-tightness and construction efficiency. The metallic silver finish is a high performance durable paint typically used on super yachts. The use of self cleaning glass and an ingenious detail of hidden gutters within the eyelids ensures the facade remains low maintenance.

The ground floor is fronted by a bespoke laminated glass in which is sandwiched a stainless steel mesh and semi opaque interlayer over a dichromatic film. This is lit from behind, using fibre optics to generate a coloured moiré pattern providing dynamic visual interest and a feeling of depth to what would otherwise be a blank wall.

Ten Hills Place London – Building Information

Client: Clarendon Properties
Programme: Offices: addition of 3 floors above existing 2 storey brick retail building, and a new façade.
Area: 14,220 sqft
Status: On site Feb 2007; Completion Sep 2009

AL_A Team:
Amanda Levete
Ho-Yin Ng, Project Director
Gidon Fuehrer, Chris Geneste, Soren Aagaard, Alan Dempsey – Project Architect, John O’Mara, Michael Mitchell

Contractors:
Main Contractor: Powells Group
Facade: Frener & Reifer
Specialist Interiors: Windsor Workshop Ltd.

Consultants:
Project Manager: MGPM
Structural Engineers: Akera Engineers
Service Engineers: BARN Partnership
Acoustic Engineers: Acoustic Design Consultants

Amanda Levete Architects

10 Hills Place London images / information from Amanda Levete Architects

Location: 10 Hills Place, London, England, UK