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The Ark is an office building located in
In 2006 German property company Deka sold the Ark to Landid backed by GE Real Estate and O&H Properties, who saw the building required a refit to make the interior better suited for multiple tenants.
The ensuing £20 million conversion was carried out by DN-A architects, comprising the stripping out of the central “village” and connecting walkways which spanned the atrium and the floorplates filled in creating two smaller atriums turning “the doughnut plan into a pretzel” in the words of DN-A director Stuart McLarty.
A new double height atrium was created on the ground floor, and a new fifth and sixth floor were erected, while the seventh floor was extended as an open mezzanine. As a result, net lettable floor space was increased by 30%, from to . Each floor can be subdivided into two spaces and the open balustrading has been replaced with partially glazed partitions.
The building remained unoccupied until 2009.
Hammersmith
Hammersmith is a district of West London, England, southwest of Charing Cross. It is the administrative centre of the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, and identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London.
It ...
, London
London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...
, England.
Original building
The building lies immediately south of theHammersmith Flyover
The Hammersmith flyover is an elevated roadway in West London which carries the A4 arterial road over and to one side of the central Hammersmith gyratory system, and it links together the Cromwell Road extension ( Talgarth Road) with the st ...
. Named in reference to its hull-like profile, the Ark was designed by architect Ralph Erskine, for Swedish developers Ake Larson and Pronator.
Erskine, based in Sweden, worked from a small office in collaboration with other trusted architects in order to retain design freedom. In the case of the Ark, Erskine and Vernon Gracie (who worked with Erskine on Byker Wall
The Byker Wall is a long, unbroken block of 620 maisonettes in the Byker district of Newcastle upon Tyne, England. They were designed by Ralph Erskine and constructed in the 1970s. The wall is just part of the estate, which in total covers .
...
in Newcastle) collaborated with London architects Rock Townsend and latterly Lennart Bergstrom in Stockholm.
Planning permission for the building was granted on 19 September 1989; building commenced the same day and the complex was completed in 1992. Owing to the difficult economic circumstances at the time, Ake Larson's UK division did not survive to occupy the building. Drinks company Seagram subsequently occupied the Ark from 1996 until it was bought by Vivendi Universal in 2000.
Refurbishment
In 2006 German property company Deka sold the Ark to Landid backed by GE Real Estate and O&H Properties, who saw the building required a refit to make the interior better suited for multiple tenants.
The ensuing £20 million conversion was carried out by DN-A architects, comprising the stripping out of the central “village” and connecting walkways which spanned the atrium and the floorplates filled in creating two smaller atriums turning “the doughnut plan into a pretzel” in the words of DN-A director Stuart McLarty.
A new double height atrium was created on the ground floor, and a new fifth and sixth floor were erected, while the seventh floor was extended as an open mezzanine. As a result, net lettable floor space was increased by 30%, from to . Each floor can be subdivided into two spaces and the open balustrading has been replaced with partially glazed partitions.
The building remained unoccupied until 2009.
References
External links
* * Buildings and structures in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham {{London-struct-stub