1 Woodstreet

This project located in Central London – right in the Conservation Area around St. Pauls Cathedral, requiring the use of Portland limestone – is a fine example of contemporary use of a traditional material.

For the 1 Wood Street office building, the facade and parts of the sidewalls were designed as a continuous curtain wall, which provides the actual weather seal, with in front a slender frame in Portland stone which divides the façade into a kind of checkerboard.

Theoretically there were 3 possibilities to fix the Portland stone:

• integration into the curtain wall system
• traditional handfix after installation of curtain wall
• use of precast panels with cast-in stone

The latter option was developed and optimized by Loveld, by combining 2 columns and  2 parapets into frame elements which were then installed in a checkerboard pattern. This greatly reduced the number of fixings and the quantity of panels.

All elements are fixed using stainless steel anchors directly onto the steel structure to avoid stresses on the curtain wall.