PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Comprehensive expansion and re-design of BAFTA’s grade II Listed headquarters at 195 Piccadilly. We were architect and interior designer. Collaboratively bold/sensitive heritage approach creating a new top floor by raising/restoring two huge Victorian rooflight structures & decorative plaster considered lost 40+ years from original 1883 Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours, built when neighbouring Royal Academy excluded watercolours.

Enhances BAFTA’s international identity as the centre of excellence for motion picture arts and games; integrating innovative state-of-the-art technology and cost-in-use efficiency, while sensitively balancing education/learning and public access, with members’ needs and revenue generation, ensuring the charity’s long-term social, environmental, and economic sustainability.

Includes: doubled capacity, 2 cinema theatres, banqueting hall, multipurpose event/exhibition spaces, UK’s first Clore learning space for moving-image arts, 4 kitchens/bars, members’ area/restaurant, boardroom, judging/meeting rooms, offices, 2 new roof terraces. Cutting-edge technology subtly integrated and sustained via BAFTA’s collaborative partnering with world-renowned firms Dolby, Christie, QSC, Merck, etc. BAFTA’s first invitingly transparent reception enhances awareness/accessibility.

Finely detailed using a classic restrained palette of durable, sustainably sourced materials with varying textures, in a highly crafted suite of bespoke details, that increase in refinement on successive floors to the top-floor crescendo.

In supportive liaison with landlord The Crown Estate, Historic England, Westminster & St. James’s Church, we developed BAFTA’s brief focusing on robust flexibility, multiple concurrent uses, and revenue expansion. Inventive combinations of areas, volumes, views, and sequential movement allow theatrical ‘reveals’ for special events.

UK premieres for new innovative sustainable materials like liquid-crystal ‘smart’ glazing top-floor, and airborne carbon/nitrous oxides’ reducing 3D-printed bar-screen. Operational carbon reduced ±73% from ±155 to ±42 kg/CO2/m2 saving ±292 tonnes/year (see sustainability).

Facilitates BAFTA’s charitable remit: investing in next generation of talent, helping build more inclusive/diverse film/TV/games industries, and increasing public engagement. Delivered on time/budget, it’s breaking attendance/revenue records. BAFTA love it!

SUSTAINABILITY

Operational carbon reduced ±73% from ±155 to ±42 kg/CO2/m2 saving ±292 tonnes/year and our refurbishment retains maximum embedded carbon.

A key sustainability innovation is UK debut (and worldwide first-use in listed/cultural building) to Merck’s EyriseTM s350 Licrivision liquid-crystal insulated smart glass. We designed a self‐supporting minimal structural frame enclosing the historic rooflights, creating the new top-floor. It reacts to sunlight removing up to 80% of harmful UV‐rays, heat-gain, glare etc. while crucially remaining clear for users, ensuring maximum views of St. James’s Church and churchyard trees.

Another innovative new sustainable material UK debut is Wearpure.Tech, a 100% natural mineral compound that cleans air by mineralizing primary greenhouse gases carbon dioxide/nitrogen oxides and reducing volatile organic compounds. Showcased to younger people in BAFTA’s 1st dedicated space for Learning & New Talent, we designed a closable bar screen in a 3D‐printed organic form resembling fabric, maximising surface area, performing equivalent to a young tree.

Creative reuse is a key Listed building design/sustainability approach. BAFTA’s new top floor innovatively re‐positions magnificent original Victorian plasterwork. Maximising materials found in construction, the boardroom reuses original 1883 oak flooring and historic marbles for a harlequin‐patterned countertop. Princess Anne Theatre’s 227 seats (loved by members) were re‐engineered/upholstered.