Home Office, London


Architect
 Terry Farrell
Date Built
 Completed 2005
Location
 2 Marsham Street
Description
This site on  Marsham Street, in Westminster, was once home to a gas works and two gas holders stood where the Home Office is today.  In the 1970s three slab tower blocks were erected on the site as home to the Department of the Environment.  The towers were arranged in parallel and rose to 23 storeys above podium blocks that stood on stilts.  Constructed using a "box-shell" system of pre-cast concrete, the towers were apparently known as the "Three Ugly Sister".

When it was decided to demolish the towers, a competition was held for a mixed-use replacement.  However, that process never came to fruition.  Terry Farrell's website explains that, "Throughout the 1990s Farrells produced masterplans advocating reinstating the area’s historic pattern and replacing the overscaled, impregnable podium and towers by erecting separate buildings and re-making lost street frontages/public spaces.  Farrells took the opportunity to address issues of sustainability on one of the few inner-city sites large enough to permit it and to develop big-picture urban masterplan thinking. ....

... In 2000, Farrells’s contribution to the winning PFI bid launched by the Home Office demonstrated the feasibility of a low rise mixed use scheme, with capacity for office, residential and retail accommodation with non-intrusion of the superb skyline views. The delivered scheme provides a similar overall gross floor area to the previous structure, of 1million sq. ft., with approximately 800,000 sq. ft. of office space sufficient for 3,500 Home Office staff in three inter-connected low-rise buildings, and the remainder in three residential blocks, providing 140 private and affordable apartments, 9 shops and 3 kiosks."

The three buildings, occupied by the Home Office, are linked by interconnecting bridges and are aptly named Robert Peel, Mary Seacole, and the Elizabeth Fry.