55 Whitfield Street completes

June saw the completion of the first stage of our work with Derwent London to renovate Asta House, 55 Whitfield Street, part of our major mixed use scheme at 80 Charlotte Street, in Fitzrovia. We have refurbished and renovated the lower two storeys of this 4-storey building – designed in the 1960s as commercial offices – to bring them up to modern office standards. These will now be let to engineering firm Elliott Wood. We’re currently converting the floors above into residential accommodation.

The brief was to keep as much of the original structure and detailing as possible, so our design has focused on upgrading the building and services. We’re replacing the single-glazed Crittall windows with large aluminium-framed picture windows and providing new rooflights to bring natural light into the centre of the building.

55 Whitfield Street was Make’s London home from 2005 to 2014. We gradually expanded, growing from one to three floors, until we made ourselves homeless with the 80 Charlotte Street project, a large residential and commercial scheme. New apartments will run above and adjacent to Asta House at 67–69 Whitfield Street, while the main 80 Charlotte Street office building will complete an entire urban block. Here we have designed a 10-storey new-build scheme with a central core and three atria, flooding the building with natural light and ventilating the office space.

The commercial portion of 55 Whitfield Street is the first stage of 80 Charlotte Street to complete, with the remaining phases to follow in the winter.