PLP Architecture recently completed a new 15-storey residential building that includes 55 luxury apartments, retail facilities and a new townhouse along Chiltern Street in the heart of Marylebone Village in London. It replaces an outdated 1960s tower and offers significant visual and operational improvements for the sensitive site, which is located next to the intimate green spaces of Paddington Street Gardens.
PLP Architecture has recently lodged a building permit application to the authorities for a new mixed-use tower on a key redevelopment site in Rotterdam. The project, for ambitious Dutch developer Provast, is named Tree House, and focusses on creating a lively, inspiring, open and sustainable environment for workers, residents and visitors in the city centre. At 130-meters and 37 storeys tall, Tree House will sit next to the Central Station as one of Rotterdam’s tallest hybrid buildings and will be a bold new addition to the local area. It is dubbed “Gateway to Imagination”, in reference to its position alongside the Eurostar platform with trains to Brussels, Paris, London and beyond.
The use of timber as a structural material in tall buildings is an area of emerging interest for its variety of potential benefits; the most obvious being that it is a renewable resource, unlike prevailing construction methods which use concrete and steel. The research is also investigating other potential benefits, such as reduced costs and improved construction timescales, increased fire resistance, and significant reduction in the overall weight of buildings. The conceptual proposals currently being developed would create over 1,000 new residential units in a 1 million sq ft mixed-use tower and mid-rise terraces in central London, integrated within the Barbican.
The redevelopment of Westferry Printworks represents a major milestone in the transformation of the Isle of Dogs from its industrial past towards a future as a dynamic, mixed-use waterfront district. Spanning 6.15 hectares, this brownfield site will be regenerated into a neighbourhood that seamlessly blends residential, educational, and communal spaces, fostering connectivity and sustainability. The thirteen buildings on site, ranging from 4 to 31 storeys, have been carefully designed to both optimise housing allocation whilst fitting within local development plans.
London’s Whitechapel is a vibrant, historic and ethnically-diverse district known for its street markets. Unlike neighbouring Aldgate which borders the City of London and which had witnessed significant private development in the past few years, development in Whitechapel has revolved mainly around the new Royal London Hospital and the construction of associated research and medical facilities. This is now set to change when the new Crossrail station opens in Whitechapel, significantly increasing its connectivity to other parts of London and attracting new residents.
The design reflects the hotel’s significant location within the emerging ecological corridor in the Eastern New Town, a representational centre for natural renewal in the heart of the city of Ningbo.
The design extends an earlier collaboration between PLP Architecture, Smith and Wallwork engineers and the Centre for Natural Material Innovation at the University of Cambridge. The 130m proposal for the World’s tallest State-of-the-Art all timber tower for Provast; a client involved in many socially responsive designs.
The 21st Mayfair, located at 15-25 Davies Street in the heart of the Mayfair Conservation Area, takes the traditional mansion block, a staple of the London housing market since late Victorian times, and gives it a new twist.
Marina Towers, in central Beirut, is a symbol of the ambitious reconstruction of the city. The highest residential tower in the centre of the city, it located at the point where Beirut was said to have first begun—the place where the sea meets land—overlooking the new Marina. The concave shape of the building echoes the form of the harbour. The crescent shape of the apartment plan emphasizes the corner living areas, which provide dramatic panoramas to the sea and mountains.