Viacom Building, Camden, London

Architect	Jacobs Webber
Date Built	2013
Location	Hawley Crescent
Description
This building on Hawley Crescent in Camden was redeveloped and extended by Jacobs Webber for Viacom International Media Networks. This process resulted in the creation of, "... nearly 10,000m2 of office, studio, production and transmission space distributed over three floors." The architect says of it that, "The street elevation was aligned to emphasise the sweep of Hawley Crescent and expanded metal and coloured fins used to chime with Camden’s pop-industrial feel. .... .... A break in the elevation reveals a soft green wall lined courtyard behind the harder exterior shell. ... ... A new entrance lobby was created onto the street that continues into the building connecting new and existing atrium spaces, flanked by a new studio, editing and production suites, ended with a link to an open space on the canal waterfront. .... ... Sustainability was a priority for the client and the scheme achieves a Breeam ‘Very good’ and a SKA Silver rating for the interiors. Complementing the large courtyard green walls are a green roof, PV panels for on-site energy generation and a rainwater harvesting system to feed the green walls." The building used to look quite different. It was designed originally by Terry Farrell for TV-am on the site of a former garage. Work began in August of 1981 and was completed in November of the following year. The image below shows the view on Hawley Crescent. (The image above is from Wikipedia Commons and is shown here under a GNU Free Documentation License - click on the image to see details of this license) Descriptions of the interior suggest that it was innovative, playful and exotic. Because it was designed as the home of breakfast television, the decor reflected the movement of the sun during its journey across the globe. Visitors started out in a Japanese styled area and as they progressed through the building, they experienced the Middle-East, the Mediterranean, Greece and on to the American west. In the BBC Documentary "The Brits Who Built the Modern World" it was pointed out that during the construction phase Farrell was traveling in Italy and was impressed by the decoration on the old buildings. He suggested that this building needed something like that and this resulted in the addition along the canal side of the finials you see below. Again, I suppose, continuing the breakfast them the finials are egg cups. When told that there would be 11 Farrell instructed his office to make it twelve, an even dozen. I suspect that the one below may be the 12th egg on top of a little tower that raised it to the height of the other 11.