Designing stylish living in the heart of Covent Garden
maber Architects has renovated 31a James Street in Covent Garden, to create three bright and contemporary apartments in the heart of central London.
Previously storerooms and offices for the shops located below, the upper floors of the building have been transformed to create spacious and stylish living spaces in the form of one and two-bedroom apartments.
Creating a new interior space
With a brief to retain the ground floor retail space, to convert the upper floors of the building into three high specification apartments and to use the cellar for plant and equipment, a full architectural package was required.
After carrying out the initial survey, maber’s architectural team worked with structural engineers to remodel the building by completely redesigning the interior layout. As part of this overhaul, the new design made use of the roof area to create more usable space for the apartments.
Bringing an old building up to modern standards
maber’s interior design team took the architects’ model designed in Archicad and worked it up to the next level of detail required for the interiors.
The project was a real challenge, explains Chris Radcliffe, head of interiors at maber. It was an old building, the staircases didn’t conform to building regulations, there were no fire escapes, the roof was leaking and the brickwork needed re-pointing. In addition, some elements within the building were listed, such as the staircases and the interior timber panelling.”
To overcome these challenges, the team had to make structural changes to the roof and new staircases were added to meet modern building regulations. In addition, the walls were re-lined to improve energy efficiency
The power of realistic visualisations
The interiors team used a combination of Archicad and Enscape to model and showcase the detail of the interiors.
Jonathan Martin, interior designer and CAD visualiser at maber continues, “There is a direct two-way exchange between Archicad and Enscape. We used the materials library within Archicad which is then duplicated in Enscape. If we change the colour of a material in Enscape, it automatically changes in Archicad and vice versa. This worked really well for us, as it is so much easier working with just one central model”.
In addition, we used Enscape to create real-time flythroughs with a finished render. The client really enjoyed that option and loved the detail that we had included.
Chris continues, Archicad and Enscape helped us to visualise the materiality of the apartments and enabled us to represent soft furnishing textures and colour, reflectiveness, metal, glass, tiles and timber grain. In addition, the accurate renditions of both natural light using Archicad’s sun path analysis tool and artificial lighting effects really brought the scheme to virtual life when presented as an experiential walk-through”.
We clipped static images from the model to share with the teams, which assisted the story telling and informed sub-contractors of the design intent. Junctions and clashes of materials could be interrogated from different angles to ensure fit-and-finish was correct prior to building, and we could stand in spaces virtually to see if furniture, fittings and equipment worked as planned.
Detailed interior modelling
The details of the design were essential to create the right look and feel for the apartments. For example, maber insisted on a flat steel bar for the new top floor accommodation staircase banister which provides a contemporary counterpoint to the traditional oak treads of the stairs. Instead of carpeting main circulation staircases throughout, the team opted for a high specification carpet runner with matt black stair rods.
The maber team used 3DS blocks provided by the furniture suppliers to model some of the furniture and modelled other elements by hand using features such as the Archicad Stair tool.
The team also used the Archicad Morph tool for modelling the skirting which has an unusual double groove. Cornices were reinstated to respect the building’s period details.
The team opted for bronze and brass ironmongery which was chosen for its aged quality – respecting the history of the building while also giving it a contemporary aesthetic. Meanwhile, the oak parquet flooring specified by maber lifted the apartments into a different rental category.
In addition, 50mm deep white wooden blade horizontal louvre blinds enable occupants to change the angle of light coming into the building, changing the mood and ambience of the interiors and helping to set the apartments apart.
Coordinating complex M&E
The M&E data was imported and exported into Archicad via IFC files and maber used the renovation filter within Archicad to clearly demonstrate which elements of the existing building would be removed and which were staying.
Archicad proved invaluable for showing where the M&E should run. Mechanical and electrical requirements needed to be shoehorned into a complex labyrinth of ducts, risers and ceiling voids,” says Chris.
In some instances, proposed ceiling heights were visualized in 3D so that ducting, access hatches and grille positions could be accurately located; this method of a more iterative yet collaborative approach resulted in time saved and fully coordinated M&E solutions.
It was very useful to easily be able to see where the existing downpipes and drainpipes were – what was being ripped out and replaced, and what was staying. In the kitchens, we wanted to show where all the cabling was going and being able to demonstrate this in 3D and colour was invaluable.
Accurate documentation for a high specification result
maber put together a package of information including plans, sections, elevations and specifications for the fit-out contractor with all the information directly exported from Archicad.
The contractor was very impressed with the standard of information we produced. Using Archicad helps us to be very thorough and methodical, says Chris.
As a result, we now have a ‘maber’ way of doing things including title blocks, drawing sheets and line weights, which ensures our documentation is standardised – all thanks to the strength of Archicad.
The Archicad model is a great communication tool for the whole team and aided the architect, main contractor, structural engineer, M&E contractor and sub-contractors during construction and fit-out.
The apartments were completed in the summer of 2021 and are now all let.