Hollybrook

Conversion and extension of Grade II Listed former town hall, providing 41 new homes in Bermondsey. Originally the site of the Bermondsey Bath House, the Municipal Office building was purpose-built in 1928-1930 and designed by architect Henry Tansley in emulation of the early 19th Century Greek Revival style.

The scheme creates a range of loft-style apartments throughout the existing building and new second floor penthouses set back from the main façade. The lofts are accessed through the original raised front entrance, which leads visitors to a vertical circulation route via an Imperial-style grand staircase. The nine-window elevation consists of two storeys sitting upon a basement plinth, which is arranged as tripartite with two symmetrical elements flanking a central portico.

The double-height open spaces provide the ideal context for the loft aesthetic, generating a dynamic contrast with the traditional formality of the entrance hall and main staircase areas. The main listed elements of the building include an original coat of arms on the front façade, marble features in the entrance hall and a set of Doric columns supporting the elliptical gallery and the Imperial stair hall. The majority of the facade is constructed in precast concrete blockwork tied back to a brick frame, with additional areas of the building constructed in red- and yellow-stock brick.

London Evening Standard New Homes Award for Best Conversion (large developer)

Private client
London, SW11

This high specification modern apartment, on the 7th floor of Norman Foster’s Riverside One, is designed around its views over London and the client’s art collection, with the plan providing a physical split between the private and public elements of the property. Emphasis was placed on the quality and nature of the lighting, audio-visual equipment, and air conditioning, all of which are managed through a sophisticated remote home management system. The finishes are finely detailed using travertine, Pietra Cardosa stone, special plaster finishes and wenge.

Hollybrook Limited
Silvertown Way, London, E16

Reworking an existing planning permission, the original curved forms and primary volumes have been sculpted using simple planes of solid cladding and glass. This has created a sophisticated arrangement of private balconies that enhance life quality and lend scale and relief to the façades. A raised courtyard, with parking beneath, allows the mezzanine levels of ground floor retail units and restaurants to spill life and activity into the centre of the development, nurturing a sense of locale. Rich materials add tactile and visual quality to what has proved to be a very popular development.

Hollybrook
Mile End, London, E2 

The final phase of Suttons Wharf North, a mixed tenure and mixed use development on the Regent’s Canal in East London, has been completed by property developer Hollybrook Limited and Burwell Architects. The 35,000m2 scheme provides 473 mixed tenure and affordable homes on a former industrial site. 

The site is situated between Meath Gardens and Regent’s Canal, beyond which lies Mile End Park. In keeping with the local planning strategy, Suttons Wharf North aims to encourage association between the parks and the nearby amenities along the canal. 

Burwell Architects’ modification of the original plans included a redesign of the scheme’s façades, which revised the buildings’ compositions to create a strong, coherent, brick massing, reinforcing the clear ‘base, middle and top’ hierarchy of the design. The arrangement and articulation of the buildings facilitates easy pedestrian movement across the site, whilst also taking care to preserve long distance views within the parks.

Hollybrook
Stratford South Central, London E15

Composed around public spaces, Victoria Mills and Hallings Wharf represent a pragmatic piece of regeneration on a former industrial site in east London. They offer live-work accommodation with dual aspect full storey windows and balconies allowing natural light to the heart of each unit. While a bathroom and kitchen ‘pod’ forms the organisational core, moveable partitions sub-divide living, working and sleeping areas, to ensure genuinely flexible interiors.

23 Paradise Street (also known as William Gaitskell House) is a Grade II listed Regency era town house dating from 1814. Subsequently extended and used as a Police Station from 1836-1965, and from then on as offices, the house is one of the few structures within the neighborhood to survive the blitz of the Second World War.

Located within the King Edward III’s Rotherhithe Conservation Area, and the curtilage of the Scheduled Monument of King Edward III’s Manor House, the site, adjacent the south bank of the Thames, is an area of significant archaeological importance.

Burwell Architects obtained planning and listed building consent to return the property to residential use in the form of seven apartments, including two duplex apartments at the lower levels. Consent was also obtained for a two storey 3 bedroom house within the grounds of the original back garden and a four storey 3 bedroom house abutting the northern gable of the original property where terraced housing was once located.

The house’s original interior partitions and features had been removed during the 1970’s and the proposals re-introduced the historic room hierarchies, treating kitchens as pieces of furniture sitting within the reintroduced historic setting, and discretely integrating modern services into the new fabric. A new external staircase provides access to the apartments located within the police station annex. 

The scale and sitting of the new build elements is sympathetic to the original building. The aim being to create a subservient, yet confident relationship between the old and new structures. 

The facades utilise a combination of dark brickwork together with gold aluminium to create a framing system to provide an underlying order to the composition. The dark brick was chosen following liaison with the Design and Conservation officers and was selected to allow continuity of texture and material within the context of a confident, contemporary composition.

Hollybrook 
London, E7

Squeezed into the urban fabric of East Ham, the 1937 Trebor Sweet Factory was transformed into a series of refined live / work units. Well received by occupants and developer, the design breathed life into a building of character. A new internal courtyard oversailed by bridges gave the development a social heart, strong circulation patterns, and dual aspect units. The structure was also extended vertically using framed glass boxes following the rhythms of the façade below. Simply finished interiors with sliding walls allow the flexible sub-division of interior space.

Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity
Grade II Listed building

Through the careful introduction of contemporary elements into reinstated historic room hierarchies, planning and listed building consents were secured for this Grade II listed building within Westminster’s Pimlico Conservation Area. Kitchens and bathrooms are designed as pieces of furniture sitting within the historic setting, allowing the elegant and non-invasive integration of modern services. The building has also been extended in response to its locale and the urban typologies of Pimlico.

The narrow site, bounded on three sides by other buildings, contained a derelict perfume factory.  As the client had affection for its industrial charms, we were keen to capture some of that aesthetic, with the expressed roof structure, reeded glass screens, painted brick and black-stained exterior weatherboarding all of which were recreated in a crisp and modern composition.

Internal features include a double height entrance hall with a bespoke folded steel staircase springing from a cast concrete half landing. Finishes are monochromatic, allowing the owners' art and furniture to bring colour. The timber and plaster is all strong white, with contrasting black structure, ironmongery, conduit and sanitaryware. Eschewing the minimal, the client was keen on a textural palette in keeping with the urban factory feel: the ground floor is polished concrete and the stair is raw, blackened steel. Upstairs rustic silvered timber flooring runs through the living spaces and the worktops and hearth are concrete. Kitchen and bathroom joinery is grey/black timber planked. The doors and fitted wardrobes are T&G, ledged, braced and framed. 

Light floods in through linear rooflights, which sit above exposed rafters that disguise their existence giving the sense of open air spaces in these locations.

Creating new dwellings at Nick Lacey’s iconic 1980’s Crown Reach building in Pimlico We were able to obtain consent and undertake a remarkable transformation of the unpromising space to create two unique residential units. Involving the transformation of a windowless services access route into a stunning courtyard home and the re-arrangement of former restaurant and office space into an elegant flat with south facing views of the Thames.

The courtyard house is modelled within the existing envelope and arranged around a series of retractable rooflights providing an inside/outside space. The riverside unit adopts a restrained palette of materials, with European oak used to integrate the massive brute concrete raking columns of the existing structure.

Hollybrook & Genesis Housing Association

The scheme provides 15 new affordable homes on the site of a derelict public house in Canning Town, with a long and complex planning history.

Double aspect apartments are stacked on duplex units, in an arrangement that responds to it’s location and takes maximum advantage of the southerly aspect. The building sits comfortably within the local urban grain, on a twisting corner plot. It’s form responds to the existing streetscape, contributing to the London Borough of Newham’s broader regeneration plans.

Hollybrook
Stratford, London, E15
BREEAM Very Good

This constrained brownfield site in Stratford has yielded six floors of speculative B1 office space. Responding to the form of the site, orientation, and surrounding buildings and activities, the façades form a pattern of clear and obscured glazing with solid panelling to the north. The fenestration allows simple division of the interiors, whilst the placing of the cores implies clear circulation and spatial hierarchies. Articulating the west front to Cam Road stacked glazed boxes above the reception area house meeting rooms with views over the Olympic Village.

Hollybrook Homes
Rotherhithe, South East London 

Imperial Court, formally the Odessa Street site is located on the south side of the Thames in Rotherhithe, and offers some of the best views over the River Thames towards the Isle of Dogs. The site was in a derelict state, and comprised a former nightclub building that blocks the Thames River path, unsightly areas of former open space that suffered from graffiti and fly tipping. 

The scheme consists of two blocks, Block A which fronts onto Odessa Street and Block B which fronts onto the river at the upper level, with a communal garden and semi- basement car park beneath Block B that links the two blocks. To the front of the site a pocket park is located at the entrance to Block B. 

Block A is six storeys and consists of 30 units including eight duplex units, two wheelchair user units and two wheelchair adaptable units. Block A is affordable accommodation and has been bought by Southwark Council. 

Block B is twelve stores and consists of five duplex units and two wheelchair user units. Block B is private accommodation and 50 of the 55 units were sold prior to the building completing, comprise some of the best panoramic views in London.

5 Gainsborough Gardens is a Grade II Listed semi-detached house located within the London Borough of Camden’s, Hampstead Conservation Area to the South West side of Hampstead Heath. The area is of significant Architectural and historical interest and features a number of Grade II Listed buildings within close proximity of the site. 

The clients had decided to relocate back to London and renovate and upgrade the property to accommodate their retirement needs. This included bringing the interior up to date by providing bespoke kitchen and accessible bathrooms, along with the removal of a flank orangery and the erection of a contemporary corten clad rear extension and associated landscaping to provide ambulant access.

The basement has been refurbished to provide a Scandinavian style spa, inclusive of sauna and modern shower facilities.

The 2nd floor of the property has been adapted to provide facilities for a carer should the clients future needs require one. 

"Burwell Architects have superbly translated our dream to restore our Grade II listed Victorian home situated in a conservation area. We hoped to get the planning consent to add a contemporary, state of the art extension and kitchen and after lengthy deliberations with the planners it was granted. The materials used, namely the CorTen steel cladding of the new space blends seamlessly with the old brickwork. The minimal design stands elegantly alongside the Victorian building. With the good weather we have been having, we enjoy the inside/outside qualities of our new space."

Madeleine & Stephan Strobel, Client

Habitation is at the heart of every residential project.

We work with old and new structures to find way of inhabiting that reflect the nature of modern living, forging sustainable social and environmental frameworks and elegantly fashioned homes.

From the crafting of a bespoke home to the masterplanning of a large development site, our work focuses on the patterns of living. For us it is about people; it’s about how we live and what makes people happy: sunlight, sound, warmth… intelligent design.

These things should be the language of the everyday.