Montrose Place
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Five-storey block of 15 luxury apartments and eight affordable-housing flats in Belgravia, London
The building is an L-shaped block with a square water garden in the inner corner. Along the inner side of the long north-south arm an open arcade connects large street gates on either side of the site.
The arcade was the key to acceptance of the scheme: it meant that every resident's entrance would be off the water garden, which is enclosed by a large garden wall designed by artist Andy Goldsworthy. The flats range in size and can be up to 400m2 in several cases.
The structure is reinforced concrete with thin post-tensioned slabs and minimal internal loadbearing walls. There is a great deal of loadbearing limestone walling, although cladding to the courtyard is mostly thin limestone rainscreen slabs. The affordable housing elevations are brick. Although some windows are in aluminium, most are made from European oak.
Services are designed to be invisible and silent – there are no visible access hatches, access to shower valves is via a pull-out soap dish and registers for comfort cooling in primary rooms are hidden in details.
Data
- Begun: Apr 2005
- Completed: Aug 2007
- Floor area: 8,325m2
- Sector: Residential
- Total cost: £31M
- Procurement: JCT 98 without quantities
- Address: Montrose Place, London, SW1X 7DU, United Kingdom
Professional Team
- Architect: GRID Architects
- Project architects: Alison Ho, Craig Casci, Ian Orr, Jens Janssen, Kaldon Smith, Laurence Osborn, Mirta Frith, Paul Voysey, Tadgh Jordan
- Client: Grosvenor, Native Land
- Main contractor: AELTC
- Quantity surveyor: EC Harris LLP
- Structural engineer: Scott Wilson
- Services engineer: Norman Disney & Young
- Artist: Andy Goldsworthy
- Structural engineer: Scott Wilson
Suppliers
- Oak and glass entrance gates: Hammal Joinery
- European oak windows: Seufert-Niklaus
- Aluminium windows: Velfac
- French limestone cladding: Rocamat
- Lead roofing: T&P Roofing