-
Architects: Morris+Company
- Area: 15989 m²
- Year: 2022
-
Photographs:Jack Hobhouse
-
Manufacturers: KEIM, Wienerberger, Crest BST Ltd, Schuco
-
Lead Architects: Joe Morris, David Storring
Text description provided by the architects. Featherstone is a new, ten-story workplace building by Morris + Company. Located on City Road, it lies at the intersection of London’s financial, creative, and tech industries, in the heart of a burgeoning hub around Old Street. Providing varied office floor sizes, generous shower and cycle storage facilities for active travel, and a ground floor café open to the public, the building offers flexibility and amenity for a dynamic local setting.
With textured charcoal façades and purposeful lintels, Featherstone’s materiality and form are a contemporary interpretation of the surrounding Victorian vernaculars of Clerkenwell and Shoreditch. The building consists of four principal blocks: raising from 5 to 11 stories in height. At street level, the building’s irregular outer walls provide more pedestrian space and opportunities to dwell, while fully openable floor-to-ceiling windows bring the tree canopies of neighboring Bunhill Fields into the workspaces. This same biophilic presence has also been harnessed on open-air terraces on the lower ground, fifth floor, and roof level – the latter of which provides sweeping views across the city, available to all tenants.
A contemporary workplace for a changing city, Featherstone responds to both the past and future of the workplace, showcasing a building that is sufficiently robust and flexible to ensure its continued use well into the future as London’s Victorian building stock has proven to date. Its architecture is permeated by texture, openness, and adaptability, all of which combined with the mechanical and electrical aspects of Derwent’s first new intelligent building, give Featherstone its own identity as an office space for the future.
Adopting modern methods of construction, prefabricated solid brick piers support textured precast spandrels and mullions assembled in a T-shaped configuration on a regular 3m grid, interspersed with Juliette balconies of a fine woven metal balustrade.
The building achieves BREEAM Excellent, and is WELL ready, featuring efficient and discreet mechanical services with excellent environmental performance. Hand-laid brickwork and precast facade design as a panelized curtain walling system create a significant reduction in the installation program, and a reduction in material and carbon impact, in line with RIBA 2030 targets.
