Academy House, Oxford Street, London W1

JRA refurbished Academy House at the corner of Oxford Street and Poland Street, creating a new HQ and flagship store for a major UK retail brand. The building has been extended to create a prominent new four storey retail unit with double height frontage and four office floors above. Externally, the original 1980s building has been reborn, with distinctive dark blue 'corduroy' faience elevations, designed to complement the black granite of Robert Lutyens’s adjacent Pantheon building. The completed Academy House project offers a sustainable addition to Oxford Street which captures the unique creative spirit of north Soho and the rich heritage of the area.

The Academy House site has a rich history, from its origins as a 1930s pre-eminent Art House cinema to the club where the Rolling Stones made their debut, and its impressive list of neighbours including the Pantheon building and Shaw’s Wrenaissance department store. Prior to JRA’s repositioning, the Oxford Street site housed a building originally designed by Sheppard Robson and built in 1989-1990 to replace the Academy Cinema which stood on the site for 80 years. The building was characterised by its 'lighthouse' corner detail and the use of Jura limestone cladding and granite base. The building comprised basement, ground and first floor retail, divided into three units and five office floors with central atrium and feature lifts. Demand from fashion retailers for large units with significant natural light and glass frontages, alongside contemporary office needs and the ongoing revitalisation of the south side of Oxford Street, called for a dramatic refurbishment and repositioning at Academy House.

Blue terracotta faience cladding has been selected to complement the surrounding materiality of Academy House. Through experimentation and after more than 30 different glazing mock ups, JRA established the optimum result in a unique profiled design with a handmade texture, creating a dialogue with the horizontal fritting in the façade’s glazing panels and nearby grade listed buildings. Produced in collaboration with Lancashire based Darwen Terracotta, the faience tiles consist of blended local ball clay and ‘grog,’ slip cast in plaster moulds and glazed in a curated combination of cobalt, red iron oxide and titanium. The result is a distinctive deep blue finish which wraps around the entirety of Academy House, as a long lasting, weatherproof and beautiful cladding.

The Gross Internal Area has been increased to 5,300m2 by reconfiguring the core, infilling the existing atrium and building an extension at level six to maximise the footprint of the site. The ceiling heights have been increased and Academy House now offers flexible clear floorplates comfortably accommodating occupants at 1:8m2.

A semi-industrial aesthetic runs throughout the interiors, featuring exposed services and raw concrete for a timeless contemporary style. Interior designers PENSON continued this in the fit out, blending industrial materials with workspaces that mirror an interactive retail environment, suitable for a prominent brand HQ and flagship store.

JRA collaborated with London artist Catherine Bertola and The Sculpture Factory to design the entrance gates to the building as public art. Her design is inspired by the building’s historic past, referencing the theatre curtains at the former Academy Cinema and Harold Pendleton’s famous Marquee Club that used to occupy the building’s basement and where the Rolling Stones and The Who played their very first concerts.

Almost 80% of the existing reinforced concrete frame of Academy House was retained, including the existing raft foundation. New structural interventions included infilling the existing atrium to improve the depth of the office floor plates, extending the fifth floor and adding a new sixth floor. Our sustainable approach to re-positioning Academy House included the use of natural glazed terracotta cladding with high performance glazing, new cycle facilities and the integration of a sophisticated energy management system to facilitate savings in the running cost of plant and equipment. The building has been awarded a BREEAM Excellent rating.

The three retail storeys of the façade have been fitted with bespoke wraparound LED panels by W1 Curates, providing a programme of extraordinary digital art exhibitions seamlessly integrated with the exterior of the building.