Best Interior Project - Work

Winner: Squire & Partners, UK
The Department Store, London, UK

Judges’ Comments

‘Rather than building a shiny new office, Squire & Partners has boldly repurposed a unique structure and given it a new life at the centre of the local community. The fit-out celebrates the building and its history in an understated and sophisticated way.’ Tina Norden

‘Loved the industrial approach.’ Fernanda Marques

This project took an unoccupied and dilapidated former department store from 1906 in Brixton, south London, and reimagined the building to create a series of work and social spaces for the architecture and design practice itself: Squire & Partners. The brief included a series of units for new and existing local businesses, including a community Post Office, coffee roastery, vinyl record store, delicatessen and bar/restaurant.

The building structure was stripped of years of incremental additions and amendments to reveal original features. Existing interior fabric was assessed to ensure that elements such as 111-year-old Burmese teak parquet flooring, a grand tiled staircase and a historic patina of colours were preserved, as well as artworks left by Nineties’ squatters. Voids cut through the building create dramatic volumes, and provide connections between levels. At ground floor, a reception area and modelshop animate the street, while a large event space is located on the lower ground floor along with cycle storage, changing rooms and showers. Open-plan workspaces are located on the first to third floors, offering spaces for the various design disciplines within the practice. A new rooftop bar/restaurant comprises a series of oak-framed pavilions with copper roofs, and a bespoke glazed dome marks the end of a large southfacing terrace.

Squire & Partners completed The Department Store in summer 2017, providing 6,147 sq m of workspace, event facilities and retail units.

Highly Commended

Montalba Architects, USA
Studio Dental II, San Francisco, USA

Commended

Alexander Martin Architects, UK
QS-07, London, UK

Group A, The Netherlands
Teaching Lab TU Delft, Delft, The Netherlands

Finalists

Aedas Interiors, global
Unilever Headquarters, Jakarta, Indonesia

Clive Wilkinson Architects and WRNS Studio, USA
Intuit Marine Way Building, Mountain View, USA

CoveBurgess Architecture, UK
Smart Energy, London, UK

Gensler, UK
Hyundai Capital UK, Surrey, UK

Jestico + Whiles, UK
Sutton Yard, London, UK

Ministry of Design PTE Ltd, Singapore
Race Robotics Laboratory, Singapore

Nine Yard Club, UK
Cannon Green, London, UK

Piercy&Company, UK
25 Savile Row, London, UK

Category sponsored by: USM

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