These 3 new build mews houses for the Howard de Walden Estate replace some existing garages to the rear of a very grand Champs Elysee-style 1912 apartment building by Frank Verity in Portland Place.  Grey Wornum’s RIBA Building is the site’s next door neighbour.

Our design takes the form of a fictional new rear elevation to the Verity building; his stone Portland Place elevation design has been stripped of its middle and top parts leaving just the rusticated and arched bottom base remaining.  This is reinterpreted in rusticated brickwork with giant arches which form the entrance, garages and upper street windows of the new houses.  The actual residential accommodation is a lean-to behind this elevation; it’s a true decorated shed.

The design narrative is supposed to work on 2 levels.  Firstly as way of ‘finishing’ Verity’s building in an elegant way; the old garages were very makeshift.  And secondly as a modern version of Nash’s fascadist design method as in the Regent Street / Portland Place development.