2 Bessborough Street and 33 Vauxhall Bridge Road, including selected hard landscaping and boundary walls

Speculative office building designed from 1976 and built in 1980-1983 by William Whitfield of Whitfield and Partners for the Crown Commissioners. The design team included partner in charge David Lyle, project architect John Hyett, and assistants AD Mason, T Wiliams, M Wright, M Stott, V Hind, P Estop, R Nicholson and R Young, with structural engineers Lew and Rodin.

The building comprises two main elements: an eight-storey octagonal tower (with a storey within a high mansard roof) accessed from Bessborough Street and positioned above Pimlico Underground Station, and a narrow three-storey block extending down Rampayne Street to Vauxhall Bridge Road, where its main entrance is located. A bridge spanning the ramp to the underground car park connects the two elements; a glazed walkway that originally crossed this bridge has been removed and replaced with plant.

The structure uses a concrete frame with a load-bearing brick skin. The window arches are cut red brick contrasting with purple-brown brick and stone imposts. Windows are dark brown aluminium, and roofs are covered in lead.

The tower's ground floor houses an entrance to Pimlico tube, several small commercial units, and the main entrance to the office building. Office space is arranged around a central service and circulation core containing stairs, lifts and WCs. The three-storey block has two service and circulation wings at each end, pitched-roof pavilions connected to the main building by walkways enclosed in brick and glass. These wings frame a shallow courtyard with octagonal planters and two-tone paving, which steps down to a neighbouring courtyard; a fountain between the two courtyards is part of the Whitfield scheme. Both elements were built with open-plan office space to allow tenant configuration. A basement level shared across the site contains a car park and plant.

The building's aesthetic is defined by strong material contrast, regimented rows of arched openings that narrow towards the tower's top, and bold, clean elevation modelling. The ground and first floors are enclosed by double-height arches, with the ground floor windows of the long range projecting as canted bays. Above, all windows are set back behind deep brickwork. Ribbed metal spandrel panels beneath the tower's first floor windows curve to form the soffit of the partially recessed ground floor.

The circulation wings have blind gable-ends with stone dressings and full-height glazed strips lighting the stairwells. The north wing forms part of the asymmetric composition around the Vauxhall Bridge Road entrance. The site's slight fall in land levels means the entrance is reached by a flight of steps cascading down to street level over a brick archway to the lower ground floor. The steps have bespoke ironwork handrails by Jim Horrobin.

The basement extends beneath the rear courtyard and below herringbone paving facing Rampayne Street and the public terrace east of the tower, where Paolozzi's Grade II listed ventilation shaft is situated. Ironwork gates by Horrobin, now slightly modified for security, limit access between front public-facing areas and the rear courtyard.

Internally, the long range's walls are lined with oak panelling, with later partitions subdividing the spaces. An original wide oak door with two glazed panels with radiused corners leads down to the car park. Doors to the service wings are black aluminium; within the wings they are generally flush-panel oak. Stairs feature steel rod balusters, brass handrails and oak strings. Glazed links between the main building and wings have exposed brickwork with both gauged brick and stone arches, stone-paved floors, and connecting bridges with glazed balustrades and brass handrails.

The tower's main entrance foyer is particularly notable. This double-height space is lined in oak panelling with vertical edges curved outward for subtle texture. The floor is paved in two colours of stone in a pattern of large squares. A bank of three lifts with oak surrounds lines one wall; the stair lines the remaining three sides, rising to a shallow gallery providing access to first floor offices. The baluster is brass with glass panels. The ceiling is coffered with a large central hanging light fitting (a replacement). Secondary stairs on either side of the foyer run the full building height. The offices on each floor were built as open-plan, forming a ring around the central core, though varying levels of subdivision now exist. The offices are thought to have been originally lined in oak panelling matching the long range; walls are now lined with plasterboard with a service void behind, though the panelling may survive underneath. Coffered ceilings are now covered by later suspended ceilings.

The Rampayne Street side features low brick walls enclosing the car park access ramp, a brick guard room and service rooms built into retaining walls. Areas of paving in stone and concrete slab and herringbone brick surround the building over the basement footprint, with steps connecting level changes. These elements form part of the Whitfield development and are generally included in the listing except where indicated on the map.