Hi, Graham. How are you doing?

 

Oh, I'm very well, thanks; very well. I hope! I don't know. It's basically, obviously, been a period of incredible change; changing times.

 

Yeah. For the practice, generally, or do you mean ‘out there’?

 

The last 10 years...Well, it's interesting: context and opportunities have become quite rarefied. Well, not rarefied, but variable. It's quite interesting trying to work with many different building types in parallel. So obviously, with Hanover, I was working on the Macallan distillery, working on the British Library extension. I was also working on Merano, which is down in Vauxhall, and an airport in Geneva, and an airport in Lyon, and a conservation and archives for the Louvre near Lille. So, you're trying to hold together many, many different directional opportunities at the same time...

 

...and as a designer, do you find you cross-pollinate across sectors? Push some ideas through to others?

 

Yeah, it's interesting, I do enjoy working between the private and public sectors. You know, public areas where actually the experience that you've picked up in the commercial world is of assistance sometimes to people who may be developing buildings for the first time. It's quite interesting how to somehow manage to cross-pollinate between them, not that we have a commercial division and special projects division. It’s the same people doing each! And they need to at least intellectually be able to adapt to that.

 

So, coming to 22 Hanover Square and the Mandarin Oriental project. Could you describe it in general terms, first of all, please?

 

Yes. There was an article on the building which I was reacquainting myself with, but what it doesn't necessarily cover is why we ended up in this direction, and the context of working in particularly historic areas of London. Because it comes with both physical, aesthetic, and political drivers, which have to be negotiated. So many of the products that one tends to achieve in these areas are subject to incredibly long, intensive scrutiny by bodies. 

When we first started to look at this, there was an existing office building, which had been failing for a number of years. It was poorly arranged, I have to say – even for an office building. We were given a particular briefing. It began as a competition, which we won. Its uses have changed over some time, and so has the actual physical fabric of the building. Working in what is essentially a Georgian square, I mean, what's left of that square is one small area to the south west of Hanover Square and we were adjacent to that corner of this changing street line, which actually defines the Square itself. 

So, in essence, as you look around Hanover Square, there are obviously powerful drivers of scale, mass, rhythm, but most of it for us is almost an applied vocabulary onto a relatively business-as-usual system structure behind. So, it tends to be done in façade terms. Sometimes those are intellectually a struggle for us, because we're obviously very interested in architecture, not necessarily the veneers of that. It's the expression of the full organism; you're aware of what holds the building, and each of those components, celebrated into an architectural ensemble. So that was our first challenge, I think: how do we bring something? As you know, it's two square pavilions. They're arranged that way because of the nature of the brief, which was residential, with a potential for a hotel. We never knew who the operator was; we never knew what the rooms would be. And also, the apartments shifted scale many times during the early design development, testing market conditions. So, the reason it evolved into these two boxes, with no services within them; basically, there's a few riser positions. And each, basically, is a big floorplate with four columns inside. That allowed many, many different variables as to an organized partitioning around the building. We also, in terms of how that might manifest itself, were considering how one circulated through these. Because the cores were different potential uses, we never had sufficient mass, of traditional concrete core. You know, you pack everything together, and then use that to stabilize the building. We didn't have that, because it was decentralized. As you know, the hotel occupies all the lower level, and partially half the level of the rear block. So, we have one section and a half section above the hotel, which is the residential component. The principle of how you service those takes place in soft spots within these big trampolines of floor that we have there. And for us to actually then hit all of the partitioning... well to avoid that, then it meant that we decentralized into a simple, small, low-rise core which sits in the floor, and glazed lifts and a staircase which occupy the lightwell, between the two buildings. 

If you see it, it is treated with almost two party walls between the buildings, which basically contains a glazed array of elevators, staircases and bridges. The whole reason for those all being in glass is that it’s like a Victorian lightwell. You're trying to bounce light as much as possible into the heart of the building, which is between the two buildings. Then, in essence, the actual fabric needed to be flexible enough to take all of these variable lines of partitions, as apartments and hotel rooms. The Mandarin has a very different specification to many other hotels. So, all the different ranges of room sizes from each hotel groups all vary. So, we had to find a way in which we could deal with who would be the final occupier by having something which could be actually... rooms can be subdivided and hit logical points around the boundary…

What? You didn't even know then that it was the Mandarin, do you mean?

 

No, no, the Mandarin came in quite late. 

 

Oh, okay. 

 

It wasn't there during planning. You know, the apartment sizes have changed. Everything does, which is why we didn't customize structure to deal with a particular room size. We knew we had these big areas below ground that could be offered to a hotel. But the actual specifics of pools and all of the various other support areas, restaurants, we knew we had to kind of find a way of dropping down into that space, which is the atrium that sits literally in a lightwell where we can't build. So, it sits against a solid wall. It’s one storey high, and you enter the hotel through that small building which links it to the existing. It's literally the crank in the corner of the square. And when you enter that, you enter into this space that then drops down below and brings light into all of the main key public rooms below ground.  We had been looking at the grid in terms of studying Georgian proportions. So, we did a number of studies of the buildings in that area, and especially in the square, of the ‘on/off’. You know, the glazing of Georgian homes is glass, solid, glass, solid. It's a thing that was ran out over Georgian London – acres of it. And it's always proved to be incredibly flexible to adaptation and possibilities, which is why they're still so relevant today. It is that they have the ability to shift around inside. You can even knock two of them into one and create another kind of residential offer. They're very interesting. For us to go through the historic negotiations with what was then English Heritage, and Westminster, it was a useful model for us to begin to develop the principles of organization of the building, so it didn't appear as a series of horizontal slabs. It was something that had that verticality, which would help it to actually fit within the square.

 

Is there any relationship between the residences and the hotel? Do they share any facilities at all?

 

Well, they can share, because it's an identical model to One Hyde Park, which I was also involved with. And basically, there is a certain sharing of facilities. As you know, we built the Mandarin Hotel and Spa and everything within One Hyde Park’s basement.

 

Yeah. 

 

And they now manage the whole building. In terms of its upkeep, they do keep it beautifully. And it's a similar principle, but we didn't know that at the time. What was then interesting was obviously, the evolution of the structure. That was what we were interested in. And we did test that many times. But these four columns, rather than then taking this large grid to the perimeter, was the exploration of this Vierendeel structure, which is the thing that actually is the defining part of how the building is read.

 

Could you explain that for our readers – and for me! (laughs)

 

A Vierendeel is a rigid frame. It doesn't employ cross-bracing; but normally they're quite thick. If you imagine a vertical ladder, the force pushing it sideways, if you fix it to the ground, each leg to the ground, there's a resistance to that. And it relies on the connection of the horizontal to the vertical. So, it has to be rigid. It's not a pin. But what happens is that there's a point in the middle, where – it's called the neutral axis, it's a point of contraflexure; it means that is receiving the least energy. So that's where the connections are made on it – you see that there's always a pin connection on the centre of what look like beams. That relates to these cruciform columns, which are basically rigid crosses. They don't bend; you know, you can't twist them around, they're not flexible. And then they're pinned together. What was interesting about the evolution of that which we did with Ramboll, the engineer, is that it allowed us to be able to structure an expression of that Georgian grid. Because they tend to be very close centres, you can't do very big. You know, Vierendeels are not things that you can do on an eight or 10 metre span. It ends up being of massive walls; we've done it in a fine light, sectional grid. I mean, it's an incredibly light structure, considering it stabilizes the building as well. And what we did with that, because of its depth, we engineered the depth so it's a composite of concrete and steel. You'll see it; it's almost like a very light grey, actually, on the sides, and then the infill is dark. The reason we did it dark, was that I think most of Georgian London, most of these buildings have been permanently changed in colour by the Industrial Revolution pollution. It's very difficult to get certain aspects of them back to their original form. And so then, what this did was it gave us the ability – we always describe the bricks, which are almost a chestnut colour, like a burnt red, that run in vertical slices, it meant we could always get rooms and a window, we could always get hit and miss around the whole thing. So, it could deal with the variable sizes of bedrooms, for a hotel, and for apartments. So, it could deal with the flexibility of all of that. 

We treated the bricks because the bricks are set quite deeply recessed. We always thought that because it's a linear brick, it's nearly one and a half metres long, that's held, you know, it's not load bearing, and we wanted to treat it almost like blinds. You know, it's something which is non-structural, it's blinds. The principle of this organization was trying to wrestle with the juxtaposition of Fenwick's on Brook Street. This is the white painted Regency type of buildings that you get in that part of Mayfair. When you viewed this narrow street, it's white. The street is white. But obviously then the square shifts colour and what we wanted to do was rather than say, 'Well, what colours do we use?' How do we express this frame? So, when you view it from the Fenwick's, all you see is the big reveals of the white-ish Vierendeel, so it just goes into almost like a slightly dappled vertical white building. And then, as you move towards it, and you start to go to the broader areas of Hanover Square, you'll see that chestnut – you know, this burn red brick, which is actually obviously picking up the colour of the original buildings, which are to the north of it. So, it was a way of being able to address the approach into the square as one of whiteness, and then to open up, and change completely, rather than changing the colour of the façade. Because whatever happened, whatever colour you chose, it would look wrong against either of those – if that makes sense.

 

Um...We're now into our 20th minute of the Five Minutes With… (laughs). So just a last couple of questions, if you wouldn't mind! Firstly, I wanted to just ask you really about the impact of the Elizabeth Line to this particular area, and that extra footfall? Has that been an influence on the project? And secondly, how are you finding London as a market generally for architecture? Or are more projects coming from abroad currently? 

 

Okay. I'm sorry, I apologise!

 

I'm only joking!

 

I mean, if you'd like me to speak in edited terms...

 

No, no, no, carry on. We'll do a special. I'll call it something different…

 

If I was going to answer your first question about the Elizabeth Line. I mean, it was fundamental in The Mandarin wishing to be there. And these are things which are incredibly important in terms of the connectivity and internationalism of that location. But I think it is having a huge impact in terms of people, and investors wishing to be part of that part of Mayfair. So that was such a fundamental part of the equation of being in a historic square in Mayfair, about having this incredible connection to everywhere. It's an incredibly important pebble, and I think the ripples will continue for a number of years. Your second question in terms of the market; after my Chelsea Barracks experience, which is the low point of my career, I have to say, and following One Hyde Park, I swore I'd never work in London again, anyway. Which is what took me out to work on the Louvre and Geneva airport and all these things. I ended up in New York and Toronto where we won a huge tower out there. And I suppose slowly, I've come back into this over a number of years. And I think it's been interesting. Because we have now started for us, we've started to get this sense that we still work internationally. But I've always found what is possible in the UK. You know, I don't think you can pull off Leadenhall in any other country in the world. You know, and I have worked in a few systems to know they are not set up to go to work at that pitch. So, I enjoy the UK for that. And it's sometimes the restrictions of the UK and the planning envelopes define – it's like wriggling out of its Houdini box. Something comes out of it that takes you places that you wouldn't have started in. It's a way of having your preconceptions challenged. In a sense, the opportunities I've found myself now in is, working on the British Library extension which we obtained planning for so that has started us. We've won another large project in the City which I can't mention. And we're working on conversion of two listed gas holders in Bethnal Green; 555 homes, which we took on because it generates another form of urbanism (laughs). These are just things I'm involved in: you know, Ivan (Harbour) has been involved in LSE and is working on a number of areas.

But, in a sense, from a personal point, I think it is getting more difficult. I think the level of investment...obviously, most of the projects, I've mentioned, usually have a significant amount of international investment. It's not necessarily coming from clients within London. I'm talking about London, not the UK, because I don't have massive experience in that. But that's what we’ve found, is that most of the investment is managed by British companies, but the actual money is coming from other places. I suppose that is a shift. That is a shift, but it is getting tougher. Yeah, it is getting tougher in the UK, I think. We've tended never to kind of say, throw everything at one country, WE have obviously opened up an office in Paris and currently, we're in the early stages of New York. So, we're just trying to actually balance out, you know, anywhere that'll have us! (laughs). 

 

Well, congratulations on 22 Hanover Square. I think it completes finally, later this year, doesn't it? I'll be very keen to have a look around when it does. 

 

Yes. I think it has some key components related to some of the core concepts and theories that we've been evolving alongside Richard and are now continuing, for many years. It's interesting that it is showing a range of adaptation of how that can be applied in many different political or aesthetic contexts. So, for our part, I think it's a beautifully honest building. And I respect it a great deal for that! 

 

Brilliant. Thank you very much for your time, Graham, and for taking part in in 25 minutes with... it's really great! (laughs)

 

(laughs)

 

I'm only joking. Thank you very much. It's gold. Thank you.

 

It's really nice to talk to you.  

 

And you. Bye.