Angels in the Architecture
Featured in Belgravia Magazine
A new studio reflects the ethos of its Eccleston Yards location - a place to congregate and share ideas.
When the team at PDP London first stepped inside the former site office in Eccleston Yards that would become their new studio, it wasn’t exactly love at first sight. “There were low ceilings, it was dark, there was damp – it was in a real state,” recalls Alec Howard, a partner at the architectural firm. “But we saw the potential. Eccleston Yards was only just starting to open at that point. We thought it was quite interesting in terms of the mix that they [Grosvenor] were trying to put together of creativity, retail, F&B. We felt it was appropriate to us as a business and as a culture.”
Grosvenor’s bold vision paid off, as the space – above the Jones Family Kitchen – has been completely transformed into a light-filled studio with clean lines, large windows and exposed ductwork all adding to the industrial, contemporary aesthetic.
It centres around the “hub”, a large, open area with a vast worktop made of dark wood and micro-cement from Poggenpohl on Pimlico Road. “It’s a place where we as a group can congregate, share ideas and talk,” says Alec. “It’s a sort of microcosm of Eccleston Yards itself.”
The studio’s award-winning design is testament to the transformative power that successful architecture can have. “It has really changed our business culture for the better,” says Alec. “Our previous office [on Ebury Street] was tucked behind the houses – it was quite introverted and we felt that was influencing our office culture a little bit. “Whereas Eccleston Yards, once we got more windows in and opened it up, is very much an extroverted space. Everybody congregates and convenes around the yard, the square, the middle.
“Culturally, it is the antithesis of what we had, and we thought, ‘that’s what we really want to be about, what we aspire to’. We’re a collaborative practice at heart, so we just went for it.”
PDP, formerly known as Paul Davis + Partners, was founded in 1994. Since then, it has grown from around six staff to 90 people in the London studio, and has added two further offices in Hong Kong and Madrid. Its repertoire has also expanded to encompass a wide base of work, from large master-planning schemes like the Southwark Low Line – which has been compared to the High Line in NYC – to small but perfectly-formed projects such as the kiosks in Covent Garden Piazza.
“Over the years, we’ve gained a reputation for being able to deal with listed buildings, older building stock, and the ability to make interesting contemporary interventions and adaptations,” says Alec, who joined the firm in 1999.
Locally, the practice has completed landmark projects including the transformation of the Duke of York’sHeadquarters in Chelsea into the Saatchi Gallery, the much-loved arts and music venue Cadogan Hall and is currently working on the Grade I-listed Cambridge House Hotel on Piccadilly (better known as the home of the former In and Out Club), transforming it into one of London’s grandest hotels and seven residences.
An exciting new commission is Grosvenor Gardens House, the large Grade II-listed mansion block on the eastern side of Grosvenor Gardens in Victoria, which will see the rear rebuilt and the historic frontage restored. It will house 42 apartments and up to nine retail or restaurant units on the ground floor.
PDP has also designed 13 spectacular townhouses at Chelsea Barracks, each spanning around 12,000 sq ft. “What we were trying to do there is a 21st-century take on a traditional Georgian Belgravia townhouse,” says Alec. “Taking a house on say, Eaton Square, looking at the design, the proportions and the materials and reinterpreting it as a modern building.”
And it has recently put the finishing touches to John Nash’s magnificent, Grade I-listed semi-circle of houses at Regent’s Crescent, which has been shrouded in scaffolding for years while extensive work took place to turn it from offices back to residential.
“It suffered bomb damage during the war and was partly rebuilt in the 1950s. We took down the 1950s’ reinstatement of the Nash façade, and with a lot of historic research, we redid it more in keeping with how Nash would have done it.”
While working on the project, the team also discovered one of the earliest ice houses in London buried underground, which has been excavated and restored and will open to the public once a year.
For Alec, whose other passion alongside architecture is craft beer – he part-owns a microbrewery where he lives in West Sussex, brewing “hoppy craft pale ales” – working on projects like these is just one reason why he loves what he does. “You work on a building for a number of years and you do become emotionally attached. It becomes almost like a family member in a way. That’s why architecture is such an intriguing profession. “It’s about peeling back the layers and you start to take away the veneers of history that have been added to the building over the years and get back to what it was originally. When we start to look at buildings like that, it’s exciting because you’re embarking on a journey and you don’t know where it’s going to take you necessarily. There’s never a dull moment.”