The Opera Terrace, Covent Garden

The project sets a precedent at Covent Garden of how a thoroughly contemporary addition demands fastidious attention to formal design and key details. Our client sought to replace the existing, outdated restaurant structures with a world class design, set against the Grade II* listed Covent Garden Market building. Planning and Listed Building Consents were granted in September 2015. Construction commenced in April 2016 and was completed in April 2017 with Sushi Samba opening in November 2018. The proposal was inspired by the architecture of the Opera Terrace with its Tuscan colonnade supporting the terrace, two pavilions at each end of the colonnade and a pediment surmounted by RW Sievier’s sculptures of the Flora and Pomona, and Cupid. The centres of the columns dictated the rhythm of the new glass-and-steel structure, and the widths of the glazing mullions and pleats reference Georgian and Victorian measures. The pediment and sculptures determined the new roofline, which dips down gradually, in glazed steps from the pavilions. The delicate structure and the ‘low-iron’ glass elevations deliver a transparent envelope. The glass roof is slightly reflective, with coatings to control the thermal comfort. Internally, the exposed steel trusses lattices produce the structure’s undulating rhythm with the stainless steel bead blast and electro-polish finish more jewellery-like than High-Tech. The new structure was erected on a transfer floor which sits above the original stone slabs and carries loads down to the stone columns below. In the northeast pavilion a new lift-shaft was added and a ‘floating’ elliptical staircase winds around a tapered and discreetly anchored beam, forming the new public entrance. The Opera Terrace sympathetically relates the new structure to the historic Market Building; the new passenger lift improved the accessibility; the area of covered restaurant and kitchen space is now doubled with an enhanced external terrace.