Squires showcases redevelopment of former Met Police HQ

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Practice delivers hundreds of new homes plus offices and shops on site of 1960s New Scotland Yard

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Squire & Partners has completed its redevelopment of the Metropolitan Police’s former New Scotland Yard headquarters, which features 268 apartments, three floors of offices and retail and restaurant uses at ground-floor level.

Its design splits the site – off Victoria Street and opposite Charles Holden’s grade I-listed 55 Broadway building – into two podiums, each with three buildings of 14 to 19 storeys in height. The development, named The Broadway, also delivers a new public space called Orchard Place.

The scheme’s lower ground floor and two basement levels house residential amenities, including a spa with swimming pool, sauna and steam rooms, treatment rooms, a gym, changing facilities, a games room, cycle storage and parking.

Squires said the project was a “unified scheme” that created a “unique sense of place”, in contrast with the former Met HQ, which the practice described as a “defensive 1960s block” that occupied the site’s entire footprint and created a wall along Victoria Street.

The practice said The Broadway’s architecture was inspired by the Art Deco styling of the Holden building, which sits above St James’s Park Station and was once the main offices of London Underground.

09_TheBroadway_webres_(c)Jack Hobhouse

Source: Jack Hobhouse

The Broadway, by Squire & Partners, seen from nearby Dartmouth Street

It said the scheme was a “pared-back, contemporary response that draws upon the period’s geometric shapes, jewellery, fashion and opulence, with distinctive diamond-shaped pre-cast panels across the façades”.

Senior partner Michael Squire said the project was a “vibrant residential-led mixed-use scheme” that contributed to the delivery of Westminster City Council’s vision for the regeneration of Victoria.

19_TheBroadway_webres_(c)Jack Hobhouse