458 Oxford Street

At a time when other department stores are contracting or closing on the ‘nation’s high-street’, M&S have sponsored the only retail-led major regeneration on Oxford Street. The new M&S flagship store will create an exemplary retail environment, securing their long-term future at this pivotal location adjacent to Selfridges. But the scheme delivers much more than this, serving to transform the quality of the public ream and creating workspace to the highest standards of sustainability and wellbeing. The project thus supports Oxford Street’s evolution into a resurgent mixed-use destination to a quality appropriate to this iconic location. The new building will be the most sustainable speculative office in the Oxford Street District’s North West Quarter, integrating innovative energy saving measures with new generation sensor technology to deliver energy efficiency and occupant comfort. The design delivers of the first large-scale multi-tenant office development in Westminster to achieve BREEAM Outstanding and WELL Platinum certifications. A hybrid superstructure, marrying post-tensioned concrete and structural timber, delivers an A1-A5 embodied carbon rate below 585kgCo2e/m2 GIA. We are researching reusing concrete from the existing building in compressive vaults to go further and deliver sub-500kgCo2e/m2. Each design decision has been considered to minimise carbon in construction and operation. A high-performance recycled masonry and metalwork façade is designed in response to orientation with individually optimised external brise soleil serving to passively moderate the internal environment. The palette of Portland Stone (recycled from the existing building), flush-pointed white Roman brick and bronze finished brise soleil directly relate to the adjacent Grade II* Listed Selfridges. A sixth floor timber cornice which caps the street façade, celebrates the integration of structural timber within the building. The building delivers a step-change in the quality of the public realm, with new permeability and an additional 1,000sqm of high-quality landscaped public space in this busy urban context. An east-west pedestrian connection across the site restores permeability lost in the 1970s. This link, from a new garden on Granville Place to Orchard Street, will extend through Selfridges to connect to St Christopher’s Place. The new garden on Granville Place and new street trees on Oxford and Orchard Street makes a valuable contribution to the Oxford Street District strategic greenways. Allied to generous greenery to upper levels, these ambitious landscaping proposals deliver enhanced biodiversity across the entire site. The landscape and public realm proposals will act as a catalyst for wider regeneration of the district and a gateway to the Portman Estate.