Time and Life Building

A seven-storey office building standing on a corner plot between New Bond Street and Bruton Street, with a basement and car park beneath. The building was designed to stand free of its neighbours, creating important open spaces that bring light deep into the structure.

Structure and Materials

The building has a steel frame with internal brickwork and reinforced concrete floors laid on clay pots. The exterior is clad in Portland stone above ground floor level, with buff polished stone facing above a dark grey plinth. The principal interiors use travertine and hardwood throughout.

Plan and Layout

The building occupies seven storeys, with the top storey set back. The main entrance faces Bruton Street. As there is no conventional lightwell, split-level terrace gardens at first floor level at the rear and second floor level facing Bond Street are crucial to the building's internal lighting. These gardens bring light to all sides of the building and, as originally conceived, to the double-height reception area (now offices and showrooms).

The interior was designed as a series of flowing spaces from the entrance through the foyer, rising via the main stair to the first floor reception area and then to the terrace. From the entrance, steps rise to the foyer and stairwell, which since the 1990s has been enclosed behind glazed screens at ground floor level. A double-height inner foyer and stairwell, lit by a clerestory window, rises to the first floor landing and lifts. A glazed wall installed in 1983 separates the foyer from the former reception area. This double-height space is lit by two tiers of near full-height windows and doors opening onto the terrace. An internal longitudinal wall contains a balcony, now enclosed. A further glazed screen added in 2004 fully encloses the balcony and creates corridors at first and second floor levels giving access to the main and westerly office suites. First floor offices overlooking New Bond Street have been subdivided according to the structural grid and refitted. Office floors above have also been refitted. The central lift stack with two opposing secondary stairwells is wrapped around it, occupying minimal space.

Exterior

The building presents a deliberately measured rectilinear block laid out on a rigorous 7.5-metre grid. The Bruton Street elevation has four bays with the entrance in the third bay. The New Bond Street elevation has five bays: three full-height bays and two bays of two storeys beneath Henry Moore's structural screen. Ground floor is currently divided into three shops.

Upper floor windows are arranged in groups of five per bay and have replaced original double-glazed two-light units. The shops below have plain rectangular polished buff stone entrances and dark grey plinths with shop windows in moulded frames, some of which have been replaced or overpainted.

The main entrance to Bruton Street has a curved polished buff marble surround to a moulded steel door frame with a glazed overlight, forms reminiscent of the inter-war period. Mounted on the transom above the entrance is a nickel bronze sculpture titled "The Symbol of Community" by Maurice Lambert RA (1901–1964), part of the original artwork and integral to the building. Ground floor display windows have ogival moulded polished bronze frames. The west elevation features a raised geometrical abstract form in tooled stone.

The New Bond Street elevation is enriched by a screen by Henry Moore representing the integration of sculpture with architecture. It is formed of four colossal abstract figures within shaped, near-rectangular openings. The outer faces towards New Bond Street are more deeply modelled than the flatter rear faces.

Interior

The foyers were designed by Sir Hugh Casson and Misha Black. Walls, floors and stairs are lined in tones of grey travertine and Derbydene marble, contrasting with polished hardwood vertical panels with a dark hardwood fillet lining the stairwell, the lift stack and the door at the head of the landing. In some areas the hardwood is replicated in an applied and painted finish to match the original.

The staircase balustrade by RY Goodden (1909–2002) and Ellis Miles is finished in black leather, tooled and patterned with brass studs, and was designed to light up. Adjacent to the entrance is "The Complexities of Man", a welded iron sculpture by Geoffrey Clarke RA (born 1924). Opposite the stair is "Spirit of Architecture" (1952) by Ben Nicholson (1894–1982). Both were commissioned for the building and have been ruled integral to it.

The first floor reception area, now offices and showroom, has reverted to a double-height space but is slightly reduced in length. The end wall, part of the inner wall, its integral doors and part of the upper balcony's inner wall are lined in hardwood panelling with a darker fillet. The ceiling is coffered in rectangular panels inside a deep border which extends beyond the current confines of the room and above the balcony.

The focal point of the lower terrace is the Draped Reclining Figure by Henry Moore, specifically designed for the building and ruled integral to it.

Elsewhere, shop interiors and office spaces are completely refitted and are not of special interest. The basement and car park are not of special interest.