The Yellow Building
Allford Hall Monaghan Morris (AHMM) began working
with Peter Simon and Monsoon Accessorize in 2000
when they won a competitive interview and began
the transformation of the then derelict British Rail
maintenance depot building & neglected, yet grade
II* listed, architectural icon at Paddington Basin into
the award-winning Monsoon’s headquarters. As the
company expanded Peter Simon pursued a new
opportunity: this time a site, identified by David Rosen
of Pilcher Hershman, which was covered with a series
of anonymous sheds on the Dale at the bottom of
Notting Hill.
The original team was brought back together.
Architects and lead designers AHMM’s focus was on
creating a new seven-storey headquarters building,
which went through planning as an amendment to
an earlier outline masterplan. This was to form the
backbone of a much braver plan: the creation of Notting
Dale Village (NDV). The aim being to ultimately create
upwards of 500,000 sq ft of new buildings, offering a
proper west London mix of uses. These include not
only the Yellow Building as the Monsoon/Accessorize
HQ is known but also its neighbour The White Building
(offices) and the Studio Building (small workshops).
Future Phases with consent and in planning include
more office space, two apartment blocks and a hotel
which will all work to create a new small but vital piece
of city and go some way to repairing the damage caused
by the West Cross Route which created a peripheral
wasteland of dead end and streets. Notting Dale Village
is about a shifting of both perceptions (of the area and
of mixing uses) and scale (the first two phases of taller
buildings mark and line the West Cross while the third,
fourth and fifth phases will repair the historical grain.
The new headquarters, The Yellow Building, is the
catalyst for change. Change for the specific area but
also for the general office market. This building is a
speculative office building which is also an HQ; it is
designed to be either and both. Currently 50,000 sq ft is
available to rent; which will allow Monsoon/Accessorize
to expand and contract without relocating. Whereas
80,000 plus sq ft houses all the Monsoon head office
staff, a number of its design departments, mock-ups
of Monsoon shops, a café for staff; there is also a new
public restaurant adjacent. The design challenge was to
create a new landmark building whilst learning valuable
lessons from the warehouse feel of the much loved
original icon on which the team had all collaborated a
few years previously.
The client was used to the four major drivers of
the project; used to being by a major road, used to
occupying a landmark, used to concrete and used
to large volumes. This shared experience allowed
AHMM to focus from the beginning on the idea of the
warehouse office: big thermally massive floors with high
ceilings and little by the way of finish. To the four driving
themes of the original conversion a mile or two east
the team added in the brief for a new ‘city room’ that
would create the connection between all the floors
- something the previous HQ lacked. A drive for economy, reflecting the fact the project is further out in an untested area, suggested the deep and high floors, the large plates of 20,000sq ft net and the simple robust industrial process and aesthetic. Indeed this search for the most extreme and efficient pushed the core as a single robust yet refined volume outside the cube of accommodation. The roadside location suggested the need for a landmark colour that would not be associated with the head tenant brand: as with the concrete AHMM pursued yellow from the outset; it was the precise colour and tone that proved the challenge. So much was given by the setting and shared experience. As the volume developed its own inevitable logic of efficiency and delight AHMM struck upon the idea for a triangular structure which coincidentally reflected the original Monsoon logo; with the core outside this assisted in the bracing of the massive plates. AHMM also decided to invest the concrete with a sense of individuality, refinement, experimentation and even decoration. The lattice is perfect for bracing and it offers a new structural identity; it can sensibly taper, it was a challenge to all and (although also very structurally efficient) it has a defining personality not offered by columns. AHMM developed, with the help of Adams Kara Taylor, a very economic yet refined, diagonal concrete lattice which wraps around the new building providing structural rigidity with the need for shear walls focused to the south end alone. Columns taper in size to reflect the decreasing loads placed on them. This grid supports all the floor slabs, carrying their load from behind the external face of the building across to the atrium. This structure is visible behind the cladding of low-e glass and sunflower yellow spandrels. Internally, the lattice is revealed in its full glory as the lining to the atrium, again obviating the need for detail.
At roof level the grid also suggested the triangular
roof profile which ‘crowns’ the building; distinguishing
the cube. This top floor references back to the idea of
factory. Internally it suggests studio and here triangular
trusses span off huge steel piers mounted on the head
of the structural concrete grid thus removing the need
for the central columns required elsewhere. The folds
of this roof also accommodate large portholes which
provide either light or louvre (as required by the air-
handling strategy).
The internal spaces are designed to maximise
connection between staff. The large open, unobstructed
floors span either side of the linear atrium, which both
allows light to penetrate deep into the building and
accommodates the main circulation stair which takes
the inhabitants on a promenade of their organisation.
The generous landings also act as informal galleries
for art, meeting and break out spaces. Throughout
the building the interior space of neutral white is
punctuated by the earthy grey tones of the unpainted
muscular concrete frame. The office floors have been
fitted out as a combination of open plan, shared offices,
showrooms and workshops. The dividing walls are all
to be used to hang the minor and major works of the
Monsoon Arts Trust’s collection which is drawn from
the countries where the collection is produced and acts
as an inspiration for future fashion collections. In that
sense the whole building is an art store, with set pieces
and odd and informal juxtapositions where bundles
of cloth constitute both art as in, Cities of the Move
– 11633 miles of Bottair Truck, Kimsooja, 1998, and
next season’s collection.
At Ground and Mezzanine a double height space runs
E-W cutting across the N-S axis of the atrium. This
space overlays a number of key functions: it is a point
of arrival offering an explanation of the building as
well as opening up views of the atrium above; a venue,
every few months for a fashion show and party; with a
cafe adjacent it acts as an informal meeting space; and
it also allows for a permanent gallery which houses
the larger pieces of the Monsoon Arts Trust’s dynamic
and growing collection including the Carsten Holler’s
Mirror Carousel, 2005. This new space, cruciform on
plan, also creates four mezzanines linked by bridges
which double up as high level viewing galleries.
The new building is part office, part workshop, part
gallery, part HQ, part speculative office. It has stripped
away the detritus of detailing that defines so much
commercial space and as such suggests there are
better ways to work and play and speculate (both
financially and architecturally). The Yellow Building is an
environmentally smart, thermally massive, structurally
light building that suggests that the office of the future
can be as delightful to occupy as the factories of the
past are to re-inhabit.
Project Team:
Client (Shell and Core): Nottingdale Ltd
Client (Fit out): Monsoon Accessorize
Main Contractor: Laing O’Rourke
Architect: Allford Hall Monaghan Morris
Structural Engineers: Adams Kara Taylor
Project Managers & Cost Consultants: Jackson Coles
Property Agents: Pilcher Hershman
Service Engineers: Norman Disney & Young
Landscape Architects: MUF
Fire Consultant: Norman Disney & Young Fire
Approved Inspector: BRCS
Acoustic Consultant: Sandy Brown Associates
Planning Consultant: London Planning Practice
Planning Supervisor: Jackson Coles
Party Wall Surveyor: Jackson Coles
Transport Consultant: Halcrow
Graphic Designers: Atelier Works
Rights of Light Consultant: Drivers Jonas
Lighting Consultant: Norman Disney & Young Light
Trade Contractors: Expanded (Concrete), Structal Rinaldi
(Cladding), Bourne Steel (Structural
Steel), Delta Fabrications (Architectural
Metalwork), Planet Partitioning
(Partitions), Mineral Star (Roofing), Ward
(Ceilings), SJ Eastern (Joinery), Quad
(Drylining), Crown House Technology
(M&E), Protec (Security and Fire), Mero
Schmidlin (Raised Floors), Thyssen Krupp
(Lifts)
Allford Hall Monaghan Morris Team Members:
Simon Allford, Shani Adamson, Sarah Baccarini, Ming Chung, Christian Dahl, Rachel Freeman, Jonathan Hall, Stuart Hill,
Sarah Hunneyball, Sandra Johnen, Gareth Jones, Keir Alexander, Barbara McGarry, Paul Monaghan, Peter Morris, Marila
Pérez-Pantin, John Randle, Alexa Ratcliffe, Morna Robertson and Georgia Tzika.
