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PROJECT REPORT: HOTELS, RESTAURANTS & BARS
CROWNING GLORY
The steel ‘crown’ creates is an inviting new presence on the street corner, glowing yellow from LEDs at the base of a glass balustrade which makes the structure ‘float’
from a distance. However once you’re closer to the canopy, “abstracted horse heads” are revealed in bespoke-designed V-shaped steel columns along both sides of the bridge-like canopy that reference the dimensions of apertures which horses look out of in modern stable buildings. They are capped with ‘ear-like’ semi-circular steel roof profiles to create an overall impression which is a playful echo of the past as well as current facilities for horses; they meet each other creating ‘points’ which give the feel of a crown on the whole building. Crucially, the steel forms achieve a distinctive finish to the structure which will help visitors on the street below pick it out in a crowded urban context.
The new columns are arranged to align with the existing wall piers – “adopting the rhythm, while the roof rhythm responds to the massing of buildings behind,” explain the architects. The roof “flattens out” over the Horse Hospital, to signal its presence, and the four horse ‘heads’ on the street elevation point users to the entrance below. A further reference from the historic stables building opposite is given in the “ribbed” roofline created by the canopy, aligned with the existing building’s eaves to “play on the
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Victorian ornamental exterior dentils.” The new building also visually communicates with another key nearby building, the Roundhouse music venue, with one of the V-shaped columns framing its iconic circular form. Erskine says that one of the reasons vPPR was approached for the project, in addition to the practice’s familiarity with the area and with Camden planners, was that they “love working with historic context and researching a site, and responding to that history with contemporary interventions.” Also, one of the “key geometry links” is where the diameter of the open pergola at the centre of the bar aligns with the rose window of the Horse Hospital. Finally, the vertical ‘slats’ within the V-shaped sections are designed to echo the apertures of the horses’ stables themselves, and help give the structure resilience against the wind loads that it might be exposed to.
In order to mitigate noise from the bar for local residents, a discrete acoustic glazed screen is inset on one edge facing the street, and “defining a small quiet exterior terrace that activates the corner,” says vPPR’s Jessica Reynolds. With the canopy following the building’s curved facade, its
ADF MAY 2024
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