Central Saint Giles
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Central Saint Giles is a mixed-use development in central London. Built at a cost of £450 million and completed in May 2010, it was designed by the Italian architect
Renzo Piano Renzo Piano (; born 14 September 1937) is an Italian architect. His notable buildings include the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris (with Richard Rogers, 1977), The Shard in London (2012), the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City ( ...
and is his first work in the UK. The development consists of two buildings of up to 15 storeys in height, arranged around a public courtyard lined with shops and restaurants. It is chiefly notable for its façades, covered with 134,000 glazed tiles in vivid shades: orange, red, lime green and a warm yellow. It has attracted a number of high-profile tenants including
NBCUniversal NBCUniversal Media, LLC is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate corporation owned by Comcast and headquartered at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, United States. NBCUniversal is primaril ...
,
MindShare Mind share relates to the development of consumer awareness or popularity, and is one of the main objectives of advertising and promotion. When people think of examples of a product type or category, they usually think of a limited number of bran ...
, and
Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...
. In January 2022, Google announced plans to purchase the entire building for $1 billion
USD The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...
.


Location and background

The development is in the district of
St Giles Saint Giles (, la, Aegidius, french: Gilles), also known as Giles the Hermit, was a hermit or monk active in the lower Rhône most likely in the 6th century. Revered as a saint, his cult became widely diffused but his hagiography is mostly lege ...
, one block south-east of the east end of
Oxford Street Oxford Street is a major road in the City of Westminster in the West End of London, running from Tottenham Court Road to Marble Arch via Oxford Circus. It is Europe's busiest shopping street, with around half a million daily visitors, and ...
. The area was once notorious for being one of the worst slums in London, known as the
Rookery A rookery is a colony of breeding animals, generally gregarious birds. Coming from the nesting habits of rooks, the term is used for corvids and the breeding grounds of colony-forming seabirds, marine mammals ( true seals and sea lions), and ...
– a maze of ramshackle houses, alleys and courtyards inhabited by thousands of destitute people. It was famously depicted by
William Hogarth William Hogarth (; 10 November 1697 – 26 October 1764) was an English painter, engraver, pictorial satirist, social critic, editorial cartoonist and occasional writer on art. His work ranges from realistic portraiture to comic strip-like ...
in his 1751 print '' Gin Lane''. Central Saint Giles stands on the site of St Giles Court, an office development erected in the 1950s for the Ministry of Supply and latterly used by the Ministry of Defence (MOD). It consisted of a linked series of brick blocks, six to eight storeys high, arranged in an S-shape around two courtyards to which there was no public access. The grim appearance contributed to the area becoming a magnet for prostitutes and the homeless. The building was owned by
Legal & General Legal & General Group plc, commonly known as Legal & General, is a British multinational financial services and asset management company headquartered in London, England. Its products and services include investment management, lifetime mortg ...
but was occupied by the MOD on a lease not due to expire until 2011. At the start of the 21st century the MOD made a large consolidation of offices so discontinued the use of several in the capital, including St Giles Court. It vacated the building in April 2005. The site, a modest urban block, covers bounded by shortened (by pedestrianisation) St Giles High Street, as well as by Earnshall, Bucknall and Dyott Streets and a brief frontage to
Shaftesbury Avenue Shaftesbury Avenue is a major road in the West End of London, named after The 7th Earl of Shaftesbury. It runs north-easterly from Piccadilly Circus to New Oxford Street, crossing Charing Cross Road at Cambridge Circus. From Piccadilly C ...
. Partly bounding the north is the 1960s
Centre Point Centre Point is a building in Central London, comprising a 34-storey tower; a 9-storey block to the east including shops, offices, retail units and maisonettes; and a linking block between the two at first-floor level. It occupies 101–103 ...
tower on
New Oxford Street Oxford Street is a major road in the City of Westminster in the West End of London, running from Tottenham Court Road to Marble Arch via Oxford Circus. It is Europe's busiest shopping street, with around half a million daily visitors, and as ...
. To the south-west are the 18th-century church of
St Giles-in-the-Fields St Giles in the Fields is the Anglican parish church of the St Giles district of London. It stands within the London Borough of Camden and belongs to the Diocese of London. The church, named for St Giles the Hermit, began as a monastery and ...
and its churchyard, playground and public gardens forming the block's wholly pedestrianised link to Shaftesbury Avenue. An alike sized space, but a complex hardscaped plaza, stretches to the north west, "St Giles Square", to
Tottenham Court Road station Tottenham Court Road is a London Underground and Elizabeth line station in St Giles in the West End of London. The station is served by the Central line, the Elizabeth line and the branch of the Northern line. The station is located at St Gil ...
. In 2002, Stanhope and Legal & General appointed the Renzo Piano Building Workshop as architects for an office and residential scheme to replace St Giles Court after its demolition. The St Giles area was subsequently identified by the then
Mayor of London The mayor of London is the chief executive of the Greater London Authority. The role was created in 2000 after the Greater London devolution referendum in 1998, and was the first directly elected mayor in the United Kingdom. The current m ...
, Ken Livingstone, as an area for regeneration in his
London Plan The London Plan is the statutory spatial development strategy for the Greater London area in the United Kingdom that is written by the Mayor of London and published by the Greater London Authority. The regional planning document was first pu ...
for the strategic development of the city. Livingstone envisaged St Giles as the site for a cluster of towers alongside the existing Centre Point tower, but this was opposed by Camden council. Although the site is not itself in a conservation area, it is surrounded by conservation areas and the council required the developers to ensure that any new building was in keeping with the height of the surrounding buildings. Legal & General worked with the local community to secure support for the project, establishing the St Giles Renaissance Forum in 2002 as a focal point for local residents, community groups and stakeholders to collaborate on plans to regenerate St Giles. Plans for the development were unveiled in February 2004 and in January 2005 Legal & General made a planning application to begin construction. The scheme was opposed by a number of local residents' groups which complained that it would constitute an overdevelopment of the site, would put too much strain on local transport and that there was too little residential accommodation on the site. Planning permission was granted by Camden council in July 2006 after changes were made to the planning application following a public consultation. The height of the development was reduced from the originally proposed 18 storeys. As part of the planning agreement, the developers reached a Section 106 agreement with the council to support improvements to the local area, including tree planting and the redevelopment of the street immediately to the east of the site. Mitsubishi Estate Co. of Japan formed a joint venture with Legal & General in 2007 to fund the estimated £450 million cost of building Central Saint Giles. In addition to Stanhope acting as the development managers,
Jones Lang LaSalle Jones Lang LaSalle Incorporated (JLL) is a global commercial real estate services company, founded in the United Kingdom with offices in 80 countries. The company also provides investment management services worldwide, including services to insti ...
and
Cushman & Wakefield Cushman & Wakefield plc is a global commercial real estate services firm. The company's corporate headquarters is located in Chicago, Illinois. Cushman & Wakefield is among the world's largest commercial real estate services firms, with revenues ...
are jointly acting as
letting agent A letting agent is a facilitator through which an agreement is made between a landlord and tenant for the rental of a residential property. This is commonly used in countries using British English, including countries of the Commonwealth. In th ...
s. Work on the new development began in the same year following the demolition of St Giles Court.


Description of the development

Central Saint Giles provides 66,090 m2 of floor space – almost double that of the old St Giles Court – split between two separate buildings. The 15-storey west block is for residential use, providing 109 flats of which 53 are designated as affordable. The much larger horseshoe-shaped eastern block, standing 11 storeys high, encircles a publicly accessible courtyard comprising 27% of the site's area. It provides 37,625 m2 of office space with by far the largest floor plates of any office block in the
West End of London The West End of London (commonly referred to as the West End) is a district of Central London, west of the City of London and north of the River Thames, in which many of the city's major tourist attractions, shops, businesses, government build ...
, with 4,000 m2 on all but the top two floors. At ground level, 2,276 m2 of space is available for retail outlets and restaurants. The block is irregularly shaped with recesses, projections and roof terraces intended to make it look more interesting and to break up its bulk. The development was built on a speculative basis on the assumption that the office space would be taken by a handful of major corporate tenants. Legal & General's commission urged Piano to avoid designing a "plain vanilla office building" and called for the new development to be "a fantastic place for people to work". As an incentive, it offered to pay an extra 10% above the normal going rate for London office developments. Piano decided to take the commission because, as he put it, "the client and the company involved were all about long lasting quality, without rushing. It is very difficult to do a job with somebody who has a short vision – in the end it never works." At ground floor level, the bases of the buildings are open with concrete columns visible behind seven-metre-high ceiling-to-floor windows of low-iron glass, which offers greater transparency than normal glass. The courtyard plaza is ringed with eateries and shops, with two oak trees planted in the middle alongside art installations designed by the sculptors Steven Gontarski and
Rebecca Warren Rebecca Jane Warren (born 1965) is a British visual artist and sculptor,"Rebecca Warren RA"
Royal Aca ...
. The treatment of the upper floors provides a striking contrast. 134,000 green, orange, lime and yellow glazed
terracotta Terracotta, terra cotta, or terra-cotta (; ; ), in its material sense as an earthenware substrate, is a clay-based unglazed or glazed ceramic where the fired body is porous. In applied art, craft, construction, and architecture, terracotta ...
tiles cover the façades in 13 irregularly oriented vertical panels on the external perimeter. The façades facing the inner courtyard are lined with another eight panels covered with grey tiles, a design which project architect Maurits van der Staay says was intended to "ensure that the upper storeys did not detract from the transparency of the ground floor and to maximise the amount of light reflected back into the offices." The façades are hung on an internal chassis carrier system (a similar system is in use in another Piano development on Berlin's
Potsdamer Platz Potsdamer Platz (, ''Potsdam Square'') is a public square and traffic intersection in the center of Berlin, Germany, lying about south of the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag (German Parliament Building), and close to the southeast corn ...
). Pierced by rows of identical windows repeated across the entire development, the façades are expected to be effectively self-cleaning and immune to fading. The colours of the façades are evoked in the design of many of the development's interior fittings, such as lift-door reveals, handrails and lift displays. The tiles were produced in Germany by NBK of
Emmerich am Rhein Emmerich am Rhein ( Low Rhenish and nl, Emmerik) is a city and municipality in the northwest of the German federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia. The city has a harbour and a quay at the Rhine. In terms of local government organization, it i ...
and mounted on prefabricated façade units in
Wrocław Wrocław (; german: Breslau, or . ; Silesian German: ''Brassel'') is a city in southwestern Poland and the largest city in the historical region of Silesia. It lies on the banks of the River Oder in the Silesian Lowlands of Central Europe, rou ...
, Poland, by Schneider Fassadenbau. The development has been designed with a number of features intended to reduce its environmental impact. It has received an "excellent"
BREEAM BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method), first published by the Building Research Establishment (BRE) in 1990, is the world's longest established method of assessing, rating, and certifying the sustainability of ...
rating on the basis of features that include 80% of the heating and hot water being provided by biomass boilers, while all of the water discharged from the cooling tower is collected for re-use in irrigation systems and the buildings' flushing toilets. Planted roof terraces laid out by the landscape designer Charles Funke are intended to absorb rainfall, thus reducing runoff, and contribute to biodiversity in the area. Only ten car parking spaces are available, at a cost of £100,000 each, due to the insistence of Camden council that the development should be largely car-free. Piano has commented that he sought to "create a development that brings heart and soul into a forgotten part of Central London's urban fabric. A place that, by adding levitated, articulated and colourful buildings, physically expresses the people-focused and socially responsible credentials of modern corporate tenants." He has said that his design was intended to fragment the outline of the building to make it less imposing, and that the ceramic façades were inspired by the appearance of brick walls and the cases of guitars and drum kits in music shops in the vicinity. Explaining why he chose to make the building so colourful, he said: "The colour idea came from observing the sudden surprise given by brilliant colours in that part of the city. Cities should not be boring or repetitive. One of the reasons cities are so beautiful and a great idea, is that they are full of surprises, the idea of colour represents a joyful surprise." The decision to provide a publicly accessible central courtyard was made as a conscious repudiation of the closed architecture of the old St Giles Court, which Piano described as "a kind of fortress." He has said that the development's accessibility will make people warm to it: "As soon as people understand they can cross through the central courtyard, their attitude towards it will change; they will cross because it's a shortcut and it is also nicer." The affordable housing units of the residential part of the development were bought by the
Circle Anglia Clarion Housing Group is the largest housing association in the United Kingdom with 125,000 properties across more than 170 local authorities. Clarion Provides a home to over 350,000 people. Clarion is based in Southwark and was formed in ...
housing association. United House and Londonewcastle bought the remaining units which sold for prices of between £500,000 for studio flats to £5 million for the rooftop penthouse. Many are reported to have been sold to buyers from Hong Kong, Singapore and
Malaysia Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...
seeking accommodation for visits to London and for their student children. The office element of the complex was fully let by the end of May 2011. As of August 2011, commercial tenants include NBC Universal, Google,
Mindshare Mind share relates to the development of consumer awareness or popularity, and is one of the main objectives of advertising and promotion. When people think of examples of a product type or category, they usually think of a limited number of bran ...
and
Burson-Marsteller Burson Cohn & Wolfe is a multinational public relations and communications firm, headquartered in New York City. In February 2018, parent WPP Group PLC announced that it had merged its subsidiaries Cohn & Wolfe with Burson-Marsteller. The comb ...
, and restaurants include Peyton & Byrne and
Zizzi Zizzi is a chain of Italian-inspired restaurants in the United Kingdom and Ireland. In February 2015, Bridgepoint Capital completed a £250 million acquisition of '' ASK Italian'' and ''Zizzi'', and subsequently bought by TowerBrook Capital Partn ...
.


Reactions

Architectural reviews, in 2010 and 2011, thus contemporary, were mixed. ''
The Observer ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the ...
's'' critic Rowan Moore called the development "a
Marmite Marmite ( ) is a British savoury food spread based on yeast extract, invented by the German scientist Justus von Liebig. It is made from by-products of beer brewing ( lees) and is produced by the British company Unilever. Marmite is a vegan ...
building ... which passers-by either hate or love". He compared it to "a B-movie ... in which giant mutant chewy sweets have, following a radioactive accident, invaded the world." Nonetheless, he rated Central Saint Giles as "one of the better" of the recent wave of commercial-civil developments in central London, calling it "dignified and refined, and the talk of transparency and openness is genuine." He praised the "beautiful precision" and complexity of the ceramic façade, citing its "depth and richness" and the "judgment in their precise tones". Ike Ijeh of ''
Building A building, or edifice, is an enclosed structure with a roof and walls standing more or less permanently in one place, such as a house or factory (although there's also portable buildings). Buildings come in a variety of sizes, shapes, and fu ...
'' opined that the striking colours of Central Saint Giles provided a "contrast with the traditional London grey/brown of the surrounding townscape
hat A hat is a head covering which is worn for various reasons, including protection against weather conditions, ceremonial reasons such as university graduation, religious reasons, safety, or as a fashion accessory. Hats which incorporate mecha ...
is both surreal and cinematic". He preferred less monotony or predictability to the scheme for the windows but he gave "a resounding and unequivocal yes" to the question of whether the development succeeded, commending it for its "skilful construction of a new urban identity for a forgotten area and the generosity of its ground level engagement with context." Jay Merrick of ''
The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publish ...
'' called it the most "wilfully vivid" mixed-use building or set of buildings since Number 1 Poultry was built in the 1990s and noted the way that the "shouty polychromatic architecture"..."imprint the vista with a bumptious, laser-etched precision." However, he expressed concern that the development would send the message that similar projects should convey "a false sense of worth" by being similarly dramatic. He criticised the way that the terracotta façades presented an overall effect that was "neither beautiful enough, nor surreal enough, to be truly remarkable", presenting an effect that was "striking but not resonant. Nothing about these façades lingers in the mind. They are, oddly, bereft of joie de vivre." In ''
Architecture Today ''Architecture Today'' is an independently published British architecture magazine, founded in 1989. Largely comprising in-depth building studies, it is published ten times per annum and is available free-of-charge to Architects Registration Board ...
'', Neven Sidor commended the development's design for "reach ngout to its context at the same time as boldly asserting its own personality." He commented that "somehow colour therapy and fine terracotta modelling make the effect uplifting" and described the vistas from the central plaza as "a joy", praising the skill that had gone into the design. Piano's standing as an "international star" had, in Sidor's view, given the architect the clout to insist on the development's more unorthodox features and had been essential for such an ambitious complex to receive planning permission in the first place. Ellis Woodman of ''
Building Design Building design refers to the broadly based architectural, engineering and technical applications to the design of buildings. All building projects require the services of a building designer, typically a licensed architect. Smaller, less complica ...
'', criticised the "lurid" appearance. He complained that "the site has been overdeveloped, to my mind, grotesquely so" and that its visual impact was "as shocking as that of any building realised in central London in 40 years". He was particularly critical of the way that the colourful upper-floor façades clashed with the use of lines of exposed columns at the ground level and called the site "a grim compromise between two fundamentally opposed ideas of how the capital might develop". On a more positive note, he praised the high quality of the office space and the spectacular views from the top floors and roof terrace.


Awards

Central Saint Giles was nominated in November 2010 for the London Planning Awards under the Best New Place to Live category.


References


External links


Central St. Giles Court / Renzo Piano & Fletcher Priest Architects
(''ArchDaily'') – description and images, including architectural drawings
Central Saint Giles WC2
– artists' impressions from Stanhope {{Authority control Buildings and structures in the London Borough of Camden Google real estate Office buildings in London Privately owned public spaces Renzo Piano buildings Residential buildings completed in 2010 Residential buildings in London St Giles, London Buildings and structures completed in 2010