Reiss Headquarters

The functions of the building are arranged in a vertical sandwich to accommodate a store across the first two floors, above which are three storeys of offices, cutting rooms and design studios. A further floor above provides corporate meeting rooms and David Reiss’s office, all surmounted by a penthouse flat.

The buildings façade, facing onto Barratt Street, consists of a double-glazed glass layer lying behind an acrylic panel rain-screen. The material character of the façade was conceived by the architect as a translucent filter with the capacity to change appearance. Each acrylic panel is profiled with large vertical gauges of varying width and depth, which create different visual effects when edge-lit at night.

The south-facing acrylic rain-screen forms part of a triple skin façade, with periodic openings that induce a cooling stack effect during the summer months.

Horizontal slabs of up-lit fair-faced concrete are designed as a balancing feature against the vertical emphasis of the façade, and the diagonal form of a staircase running from the second to the fourth floors is intended to offset the orthogonal frame.