Building shops, offices and a basement club on Oxford Street

Wates is adding a mixed retail and office space – plus basement nightclub – to the UK’s most famous heritage shopping street

Oxford Street in central London is an area steeped in history. Built by the Romans, it was notorious until the 18th century as a thoroughfare towards the Tyburn gallows, and later became a centre for dressmaking and fashion. Most now think of Oxford Street as a retail nirvana, albeit one recently blighted by an oversupply of American candy stores. It might now gain new recognition for all the big-ticket construction projects dotting its length, encouraged by the arrival of Crossrail and a post-pandemic verve to bring people back to city centres.

One of these projects is the Ribbon, a retail-led mixed-use building, named in homage to the site’s dressmaking history. Various design features reflect that tradition, including the rich colours of the facade, for which architects Orms drew inspiration from fabric. When CN visits, main contractor Wates is more than halfway through the 18-month-long project, which it is delivering for client CBRE and funding firm M&G.

The Ribbon may have been designed to blend in with Oxford Street’s fine heritage buildings, but the way it is being constructed is anything but traditional. The building’s nine storeys and two split basement levels are enclosed by a mixture of steel frame, cast in-situ reinforced concrete, composite floor slabs and precast concrete.

Heading the development for Wates is project director Jack Nesbitt. He cut his teeth managing numerous schemes across London, including transforming an ageing art deco cinema in Chelsea into a modern retail offering. Nesbitt’s next challenge is to deliver around 2,500 square metres of prime retail space, 7,500 square metres of office space with bike storage, showers and changing rooms, plus a basement nightclub.

The nightclub was added to the scheme as a planning requirement, after mayor Sadiq Khan in 2018 objected to the loss of the Scandal venue that formerly occupied the site. As it was added relatively late in the process, the nightclub forced a rethink over the building’s original design.

“We had to play a little with the layout of the plant areas, which would normally have been in the basement space. After some design gymnastics, we settled on air-handling units on each floor, maintaining the existing UK Power Networks substation in the Wells Street pavement vaults and providing a new substation for the development,” explains Nesbitt.

Specialist contractor Erith demolished the existing structure and constructed the basement box. The team installed continuous flight auger (CFA) piles of 600-750mm diameter beneath the columns and core to depths of 20 metres beneath basement formation level. Perimeter retaining walls were built using 750mm diameter CFA secant piles.

Piling was considered more suitable than a raft foundation, because having a relatively small number of columns throughout the frame concentrates high loads in just a few locations.

In all, almost 5,500 cubic metres of concrete has been used to form the basement structure and core, with 900 tonnes of structural steel composing the frame. From ground-floor level, the slabs are metal-decking and reinforced concrete composite.

The building’s facade is striking. In a departure from the standard yellowy ‘London Stock’ bricks that predominate across the capital, the Ribbon is cloaked in a reddish-brown brick slip, cast into the precast concrete units that clad its frame. The effect is visually stunning. Staffordshire-based specialist manufacturer Thorp Precast has done the concept justice – there are none of the sometimes glaringly obvious joints between adjacent units, and no differences in brick tone from one unit to the next. It looks like a team of master bricklayers have been brought in at great expense, which is not always the case with brick-slip-clad precast facades.

These brick-concrete hybrid panels weigh as much as 20 tonnes. They were lifted in by the two tower cranes that initially served the project from the tiny pit lane delivery zone, situated in Wells Street. The project team has now reduced the number of cranes to one, increasing its jib length to 55 metres so it reaches further across the site.

“There is a section of precast facade that is left out to accommodate the hoist, which helps us deliver loads to all the levels. But all the precast itself has been lifted into position by crane. We are trying to pre-load the upper floors with materials so that we can work efficiently,” says Nesbitt.

To help, the team has brought in specialist logistics company MadiganGill to manage deliveries to and from the site. It’s no mean feat in this part of central London, which even on a weekday in January is exceptionally busy with both vehicle and pedestrian traffic.

“They have been incredibly important to the work we are doing here,” says Nesbitt. “We have worked with MadiganGill in the past and they make sure everything we need is brought to site safely and on time.”

When CN visits, there are 240 workers on site, a number that will rise to 350 when interior work begins in earnest, ready to hit the project completion date in late autumn.

Soon after, the Ribbon will open its doors to the shopping public and its offices to staff. With this modern, slick destination for credit-card waving devotees, a new phase of Oxford Street’s long history may yet begin.