New London Architecture

Five minutes with… John McRae, director ORMS

Thursday 12 November 2020

David Taylor

Editor, NLQ and New London Weekly

John McRae

Director
Orms

John McRae: That must be Mr Taylor!

David Taylor: It is Mr Taylor! How are you? It's almost like you were going to say: ‘I've been expecting you, Mr Bond…and looking at your phone number, it ends in 007 so it would be highly appropriate for that to be the case…!

JMc: (laughs) Yeah, hopefully I will be shaken but not stirred!

DT: (laughs) So, hello, and congratulations on winning the NLA Award in the Welcoming category for The Standard. First of all, how did that feel when you heard - I mean, it's got lots of awards so far – and secondly, what is the main thing you think you've learned from that project?

JMc: Firstly, thanks very much David, for inviting me to join you for the five minute catch up. Yeah, we’re absolutely delighted with the NLA award. The Standard, as you say, has been getting a lot of coverage and I think rightly so. I don't mean that just from an architectural point of view. I think it's a great place to be. We've had lots of really good feedback – I think the thing that I've learned is that our instincts about keeping buildings, our intuition around it, I think it has paid off. Crosstree Real Estate partners, who are the owner of that building as we mentioned before, were the only bidders to want to retain the building. Between us, we recognise that the building was unloved and I think it's been completely repositioned to move it from what was termed a background building to being a foreground building. Buildings such as The Standard can be a catalyst for the reinvention of areas – that building really is a destination…lockdown permitting! 

DT: It strikes me that one of its major successes is the devotion of a lot of its space to public space. That is, you don't have to be a Standard Hotel room occupier to enjoy the place. Do you think that is something that's going to become more prevalent, and especially perhaps since the arrival of COVID-19?

Orms, The Standard © Timothy Soar
JMc: I think I completely concur with you. Part of the hotel being a destination is its ability to interact with many members of the public. Whether you are a guest or whether you're merely there between meetings, it has an offer in which it welcomes all. I think that is the key thing, especially being on that south side of the Euston road. That particular building faces a lot of redevelopment on the North side and so that ability to create somewhere that people want to go to and to stay in and to keep coming back is a really important thing. 

There's a lot of outdoor space on the ground floor of The Standard. You will have seen that a lot of the perimeter ground floor windows are sash and case so they can be opened up. The spaces are really flexible, so having the ability to open up the building - be inside, be outside, have air movement through the spaces, being able to socially distance…

I've actually been there since the first lockdown, and they handled it incredibly well. They’ve been following the guidelines but it didn't feel as though you were being sterilised, if you know what I mean? It’s still a really warm welcome and I think that's a really difficult thing to do in these times.

DT: Now, obviously the hotel sector’s been very heavily hit in this period in terms of room occupation. You've just got permission for your conversion of the old Central St Martin’s site for a hotel complex – I'm just wondering, has this changed at all the way you think about how that may operate in future? Or are you just projecting further into the future for when hopefully a vaccine is available and we are back to ‘normal’?

JMc: The former Central St Martin’s site is the second hotel that we will have worked on following The Standard. It's interesting you picked up the destination and the openness of The Standard. Camden, for that particular site, were after a rich mixture of uses because they wanted to create and establish a new identity for that area. And part of it was about drawing on its cultural history as the centre for arts education. Most of this design was, I would say, about 80-90% done ahead of Covid. We worked on it alongside a company called Hotel Hussy. We said at the time the build-out programme for that particular project is going to be circa four years; the idea of creating a hotel brand now that would be relevant in four years’ time is pretty impossible, because essentially it will be out of date before it even opens. What we ended up doing was: we instead created a vision and set of values for the sites. And that was really to inform what the DNA of the hotel will be.

Orms, The Former Central Saint Martins © Timothy Soar
But also, to help act as a guide and really to create and deliver every aspect of the project. That is from design and build through to the partnerships and the operation of the building as it comes online. That’s been hugely important, because yes, we could say we designed it for Covid, but in four years’ time I jolly well hope Covid will have disappeared to wherever it came from. But we may face a different pandemic so I think we've been trying to keep the design moving. The operation philosophy will evolve so we didn't want to be too rigid, too early.

From the research that we did we looked at a couple of examples: COMO The Treasury hotel in Perth, Australia and we looked at the Ace Hotel in LA. Both of those examples had taken principles of public buildings and public areas and applied them to hotels. This idea of creating flexible, open, adaptable spaces to all has actually been what has underpinned our design thinking so far. We know that this thing is going to evolve; we know it's going to change - it may have to address a whole series of new challenges in the next couple of years, but the underlying values and vision has been set out. And basically, our vision is to create an inclusive public space for both London locals and visitors and the idea is to connect them with the ideas and businesses and each other. That's the vision that we set out.

Yes, there are some parallels you could argue with The Standard, because the ground floor does a lot of those things, and I think what we are seeing especially in this particular scheme is that we're going to have cultural spaces; we're going to have events spaces; we’re going to have affordable housing; we're going to have different types of bedroom layouts. But the real key of this project has been the mixture of uses across the entire ground floor of the site. So: there will be a new courtyard. We’re reinstating the rear of the Lethaby building, which was lost in one of the world wars, and we are reinstating the original lecture Theatre in the Lethaby building, creating a screening room. There will also be maker spaces, a cultural offer and some flexible working space. So, it's going to be a real, true mixture of uses within that site.

Orms, St Giles Circus © Hayes Davidson
DT: Just round the corner from there, at Tottenham Court Road, you're also working on the Outernet. Tell me about that, because that's again another very hard hit sector in terms of music venues. It just feels like another century ago that I went to went to a music event or a gig! What is the USP there? It is supposedly London's newest retail media experience. Could you unpack that for me? 

JMc: Yeah. So I think that the key difference on the Outernet is using digital technologies. We're using the latest LED screens and using the data to create both economic and social value on the site. What I mean by that is that there's about 23,000 square feet of LED screens, which will do everything from show art installations to product launches to possibly showing live gigs within the main building. 

What that has done is it generates value in a different way. You can rent screen time and it takes the pressure off a traditional pounds-per-square-foot, based on area. Now what that enables us to do is that we are creating two music venues - one is a 2000-person, and one is a 300-person grassroots venue. The value above ground has enabled it to take the strain off the value below ground, because music venues in themselves don't traditionally make any money and maybe that will be even more challenging move forward. 

The screens enable small businesses or large businesses to rent the spaces, so you no longer have to commit to a say 10 or 15-year lease within, let’s say, Oxford Street. You could rent the screens for an hour, 24 hours a week, a month and you can have your main warehouse outwith London. So it really is an opportunity for businesses and brands to display themselves in a very different way in the heart of central London, as well as it being an attraction back into central London.

 

DT:  So: very final question. How is business at the moment for you as an architect? What is it like being an architect in this weird time? Are you in the office? What's going on?

JMc: With the new national restrictions just last week we went from having two groups alternating each week, so we pretty much had all of the office pretty much back on a fortnightly basis between the two weeks; we're now down to a very restricted core group of people in the office, one of which is myself. So I'm actually sat in the office now, speaking to you.

DT:  Right. How many are in today?

JMc: I think we have got 10 or 11 as our core group who can’t readily work from home. Quite frankly, I have found that particularly challenging. I have spent near on six months on an ironing board in my bedroom helping to run the practice, which was really quite interesting!  (laughs) 

It’s great to be back, I have to say. We are really optimistic. It's a cautious optimism - we are in the throes of hopefully getting Central St Martins site into the next stage of design. We've got a couple of others which are scheduled to kick off in January, and so we’ve brought everybody that we had on furlough back early. We had a small group on furlough and we’ve committed to not even entertaining redundancies or a review of that this year. 

DT: What's the survival secret?

JMc: Um. The survival secret… I think the lead up and the years in which we've been working, which have been incredibly rich in terms of the quality of work and the rewards from it. You have to not drop the ball in in that time. Because I think what we're finding is the flight to quality, the attention to detail and the quality of service that you provide during up-times really does help define your route through slightly more challenging times. We have worked really hard in the last few years to make sure that we don't take the eye off the ball.

DT: Well, good luck with it all! I look forward to having another flat white with you in the Standard bar at some point and, further forward, over at Saint Martins.

JMc: Yes, I’d love to see you over there.

DT: Thanks John.

JMc: Okay thanks. Cheers!


David Taylor

Editor, NLQ and New London Weekly

John McRae

Director
Orms



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