Planned in the seventeenth century, St James’s Square is one of London’s earliest formal squares. Much of the Georgian fabric has been lost, however, apart from several houses on the north side. Our brief was to replace number six, an undistinguished 1960s office building designed by Fitzroy Robinson that was situated between number seven (1911 by Edward Lutyens) and number five, a relatively original house. All this suggested the adoption of a classical idiom.
The site was unusually extensive, and in addition to the St James’s Square facade, there were elevations onto Apple Tree Yard and Babmaes Street to the north. One of the characteristics of traditional city buildings is that their elevations tend to reflect their place in the urban setting. This discontinuity supports the case for a varied architectural scenography.
As a result our project had three distinct and different elevations. The St James’s Square facade was to be made of stone, a Palladian composition with a base, piano nobile, attic, and an ‘area’ to the basement. The elevation facing Babmaes Street paid homage to the early examples of modernism on nearby Jermyn Street, and in particular to Joseph Eberton’s Simpsons of Piccadilly store. The Apple Tree Yard elevation was to be brick with exposed steel lintels, in the functionalist tradition of the mews.
Planning consent was secured but another architect was commissioned to build our design.