CAMDEN GOODS YARD
DECEMBER 2017
Camden Council granted planning permission to Camden Goods Yard at the end of November, voting unanimously in favour of the scheme. The extensive development reinvents an existing Morrisons supermarket and car park on Chalk Farm Road and in close proximity to the Roundhouse and Camden Locks. The project will deliver 573 new homes of mixed tenure, including nearly 40% affordable homes.
Niall McLaughlin Architects designed the mixed-use building marking the main point of access to the Camden Goods Yard site off Chalk Farm Road. It incorporates an existing petrol filling station into a mixed-use building that accommodates workspace alongside retail, a cafe, restaurant and winter garden.
The shop units are placed between heavy brick piers with riveted steel beams above, referencing the language of the ‘Great Wall of Camden’ that once stood in its place and the historic industrial structures nearby. At the corner, the building is a celebration of public activity, enlivened by the inhabitants of its cafes and restaurants, and a winter garden at the top level. The adjacent office accommodation has a vitreous and delicate outer facade with a layered and dynamic inner skin offering depth, texture and changing transparency.
The project is a collaboration with Allies and Morrison, who are the overall masterplan architect and, together with Piercy & Company, designers of the individual buildings.
A SITE FOR SAURIIS
JANUARY 2017
Our proposal to redevelop the grounds of the Natural History Museum is due to start on site this month. The work to the main entrance – the first of three phases – will introduce level access to this area for the first time while also restoring the Grade-I listed fabric to its former glory.
The works include changing levels, repaving the forecourt, restoring railings, installing planting, and repairing or reinstating original terracotta details across the site.
Ahead of this, the main entrance and central hall of the Museum are now closed while both teams gear up for construction – including some unusual enabling works. As part of these works Dippy the diplodocus has now been dismantled ahead of going on tour around the country; to be eventually recast in bronze for the next phase of our project.
The railings have now been removed for off-site restoration and re-painting:
And scaffolding is also going up for the removal of display cases and various specimens:
This will need to go up again halfway through construction of Phase 1 allow for delivery of the blue whale skull through our active site. Here it is just before it left the Museum.
If you’re wondering how that that will fit through the front doors, the answer’s simple: the same way the elephants do.
Phase 1 is due to complete mid-July ahead of the main entrance reopening to the public shortly after. In the meantime, there’s a pop-up conservation studio in the Darwin Centre – which we highly recommend – where you can see the conservationists at work restoring the whale’s bones.