Greenhill Place

Located on a busy pedestrian route between Harrow’s town centre and outer residential areas, the site was a dead end in the road network, dominated by a surface car park and bounded by run-down buildings and service yards. Two highrise residential developments were proposed on the surrounding sites, providing nearly 500 new homes with mixed tenures.

The council’s brief was for kiosks to create new town centre opportunities for Harrow’s emerging food business sector, and a showcase for art. CarverHaggard’s proposal was to combine the different food kiosks and ancillary spaces into a single building to shape the new public space. This cranked volume makes a new edge to the square and hosts local food businesses, with a covered seating area for customers, open by day and secured at night behind patterned shutters. An art display space, curated by Harrow Arts Centre, has a large shop window facing onto the pedestrian route and the main high street.

The gridded roof structure of the building is infilled with a frieze of green patterned panels and rests on cruciform steel columns, forming a sheltered colonnade where the canopy projects over the kiosks. The frame and foundation are designed to be demountable and re-usable at the end of the building’s life.

CarverHaggard worked with graphic designer Objectif on a pattern and colour scheme which recalls the site’s history as a rural hamlet and the decorative facades of nearby interwar picture palaces.

Outside the building, a terrazzo floor acts a welcome mat and provides a site for a fruit and vegetable stall, while the projecting canopy acts as a gateway with an oversized sign.