Due to the historic streetscape, tight planning restrictions and the movement towards retrofit, new buildings don’t happen very often in Soho. Our development on Berwick Street, adjacent to the market, started with a typical neighbourhood block—a series of 11 rundown buildings with ‘traditional’ Soho uses. Their tiny floorplates made them difficult to work with, limiting the possibilities for re-use.

As the buildings were not listed, we saw an opportunity to transform the site with a mixed-use scheme. The design, by Squire & Partners, reads as a terrace of separate buildings of a scale that sits comfortably within the existing streetscape and reflects the original plot sizes.

Each plot has a stack of three apartments, with retail spaces on the ground and basement floors, and there is a spectacular penthouse on top of the building. The apartments are Lifetime Homes compliant, and have timber-shuttered windows onto Berwick Street. Green tiled details—which have been much copied since—are drawn from the traditional glazed bricks found all over Soho and reflect the colours of the market below.

This project required tenacity and confidence. There were considerable construction challenges throughout due to the tight location and, with the financial crisis of 2007/8, the property market hit a low point. With the trust and support of our bank we completed the project, with the apartments selling for higher prices than projected in our original appraisal.

The scheme has been used by Westminster City Council as an exemplar for local regeneration. It has acted as an anchor both for the regeneration of the market and the ongoing cleanup of the area, while the vintage comic shop on the ground floor has become a local institution.