16-18 Connaught Place

16-18 Connaught Place is an office building designed in 1980 and constructed in 1985 by the architectural practice Whitfield Partners, with David Lyle as partner in charge and David Walsh as project architect. Built speculatively for the Church Commissioners, the contractors were McAlpine.

The structure employs a concrete frame with concrete waffle-type floor plates. The facades combine Hudson Bramber yellow multi-stock bricks with dressings of Weldon stone and Milton Hall red bricks used for the segmental arches, complemented by lead sheeting. Windows are set in aluminium frames. Decorative iron screens facing Edgware Road, area railings, and lamp standards are of mild steel, forged by blacksmiths James Horrobin and Terrence Clark.

The building is roughly E-shaped in plan with three projecting wings on its south side and a stepped outline to the north where it meets the Victory Service Club. The main spinal range runs east-west and faces south across Connaught Place for four storeys. At the east end, the building rises to seven storeys to form a tower element facing Edgware Road. A sunken basement extends beneath the southern areas. A courtyard garden at the west end, set at graduated levels, is approached by staircase. To the east of the main block stands a single-storey oval lodge building, connected to a screen wall with iron railings dividing Connaught Place from Edgware Road.

The architectural character stems from a combination of variegated brick walling laid in Flemish bond and projecting plate glass oriels that alternate visual prominence across the facades.

The south front features three distinctive projecting wings acting as porches or portes cochères with segment-headed archways to three sides decorated in red brick. These wings die back via hipped lead roofs above the second floor, each containing a wide bay with an arched ground-floor opening and a single wide window above lighting the upper two storeys. The widest wing sits slightly left of centre. A stone plinth at the wall base incorporates stone benches flanking the central portal; inside the porch above the glazed doors is a landing window with ironwork bars reminiscent of a portcullis. This central feature is flanked by seven bays to the right and four to the left, each recessed and fronted by basement areas. Metal grilles in the area floors allow light to reach the sub-basement car parks. The south wall of each area is rendered with scribed horizontal lines imitating masonry, creating the impression of a platform for the Georgian terrace opposite. The other three sides have battered brick basement walling with oriel windows rising from the slope, extending through to the second floor where they die back via a glazed slope. These oriels have bronzed aluminium frames with dark and clear glass in a tripartite glazing pattern. Brown brick walling separates each bay. Second-floor windows are recessed. A continuous band of lead sheeting with angled top runs above the second-floor walling. The third floor is slightly recessed with a continuous line of clear and black glazing. The roof slopes initially then flattens. The eastern tower steps back from the brickwork below and rises four further floors, with a southern projection housing a staircase. The tower walls are clad in clear and black glass mounted in bronzed aluminium frames, similar in appearance to the top floor of the east-west range. The corners are angled with lead sheeting capping both tower and brick walls, an angled roof masking services at the tower edge.

The east front facing Edgware Road has brick walling to the lower three floors. A canted section projects at ground level with two wide service entrances with splayed surrounds and a pedestrian doorway, all with metal doors and segmental red-brick arches. This projection dies back via a hipped lead roof. Four oriels climb from first to fourth-floor level. The oriel windows and the curtain wall of the seven-storey tower above employ clear and black glass in bronzed aluminium frames as before.

The west front displays eight bays of metal-framed windows divided by brick piers to the lower walling. The basement is exposed here and extends four floors deep with a further recessed attic floor with glazed walls above. A landscaped garden approached by steps from Connaught Place takes advantage of the sloping land to create terraces with raised beds and a fountain featuring basins and a miniature cascade, now converted to planting troughs.

The north front facing the Victory Service Club has a blind projection at right of centre extending to the boundary wall. At either side, lower floors are masked by glazed roofs originally housing conservatories and extending to the boundary wall. Above these are three floors of brick walling with metal-framed windows with red brick heads and a recessed attic floor with glazed walling.

Internally, the reception area retains wood panelling to the lift lobby, seen also on other floors, though the reception has been redesigned. The present café area, formerly a conservatory, has projecting and recessed blonde wood panels to its corridor approach and east wall. Staircases appear to remain in their original positions.

The screen wall facing Edgware Road has a stone plinth and five openings with segmental red brick heads and forged iron railings with notched heads, designed and made by James Horrobin and Terrence Clark. At the south end stands the oval lodge building with a stone plinth and flush stone band at window-head level. The hipped or conical roof rises to a louvered vent at its centre. A pair of vertical slit windows faces west and a door with overlight faces north.

Additional railings, handrails, and lamp standards with glass globes were designed and forged by Horrobin and Clark to shield and light the sunken areas on the south side and the sunken garden at the west end.