Island Studios
In July 2006, Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands moved to its custom-designed studios in South-West London. Following a six month restoration and redevelopment, the former Island Studios, home to Island Records for over 32 years, have been transformed for use as design studios with lettable space for other creative businesses.
The site is a complex of nineteenth century former laundry buildings backing onto an elegant house in a garden square. Stripped of various accretions of the last 130 years, the laundry buildings now form a sequence of brilliantly day-lit spaces, arranged around a central core.
The individual cellular offices and raised platforms of the Island era have been dismantled in favour of large, clear flexible volumes, more suited to studio working. This also marks a return to the spirit of the original spatial arrangement of the laundry.
The redevelopment concentrated on the retention of as much of the building fabric as possible, where demolitions were necessary, materials were recycled or re-used.
Throughout, simple, commonsense environmental control systems are utilised and efficient space planning has resulted in the occupation density of the building being able to double.
