61 Oxford Street aims to harmonise the disparate architectural styles that currently characterise east Oxford Street by carefully replacing some local buildings of note with a prominent corner beacon. With its focus on glass – the surface of choice for retailers – the scheme hones in on the area’s one and only shared material quality, and, in undulating that glass, nods to the history of London’s special glazed shopfronts.
An eight-storey volume is articulated with a hierarchy of curved ‘oriel’ or bay windows to unify ground and upper floors and establish the building’s place both on the street and in the sky. The ‘wave length’ of the vertical undulation shortens at the upper levels and combines with horizontal banding to distinguish the retail (the four lower levels, including lower-ground) from the office (the two middle levels) and residential (the upper two levels). Views, amenity and daylight are maximised for office and residential occupants through set-backs, external terraces and internal planning.
This building represents a contemporary beat on the eastern end of Oxford Street, composed of a clever ‘sandwich’ of flexible use wrapped in a sensuous glass skin.
The single building through the varied proportion of vertical glazed fluting recalls the several buildings which once inhabited the site, whilst the tripartite arrangement in elevation reflects the hierarchy of surrounding buildings. A corner lantern is a successor to the feature of the previous Victorian pub and ‘racy’ canopy nods to the Selfridges store amongst others in a joy of consumerism.
The client and design team recognised the potential of the site to be redeveloped into a mixed-use scheme that would revitalise and contribute to the local area. The brief required a contemporary design that would sit sensitively alongside the historic fabric through careful articulation of the building form, at the same time delivering a layered ‘sandwich’ of retail, office and residential floors. The busy and prominent site is in the London borough of Westminster, at the junction of Soho Street and Oxford Street, on a popular route from Fitzrovia to Soho. The area is in the midst of significant regeneration due to Crossrail and other major redevelopment sites.
Zara inhabits the lower portion of the building and has quickly made it one of its flagship stores. The glass façade reflects all the great traditions of department stores and gives a contemporary feel on shopfronts and display cases. Office accommodation sits above the retail with apartments inhabiting the skyline. All three uses work well together, giving commercial ‘flex’, each piece carefully planned, enjoying the transparency of the glass skin.
The client and architect’s ambitions were extremely high, there has obviously been a good working relationship with the team and planners which has breathed beautiful new life into a commercial building and raised the bar for Oxford Street. This is a thoroughly delightful with clever references to context, mixed-use and sky-line.