One of Britain’s leading architectural historians has joined the assault on Piercy & Company’s proposals for a seven-storey office building in South Kensington.

Charles Saumarez Smith, a Stirling Prize judge and former boss of the National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery and Royal Academy, dubbed the scheme ”pretty hideous”.

The Wellcome Trust lodged a planning application in February to flatten an existing four-storey art deco block at 63-81 Pelham Street and replace it with a seven-storey building. The proposal would more than double the floorspace of the current 1925 offices from 5,300sq m to 11,400sq m.

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