BAFTA Headquarter

Comprehensive expansion and re-design of BAFTA’s grade II Listed headquarters at 195 Piccadilly. Collaboratively bold/sensitive heritage approach creating a new top floor by raising/restoring two huge Victorian rooflight structures & decorative plaster considered ‘lost’ 40+ years from original 1883 Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours, built to ‘oppose’ the neighbouring Royal Academy.

Enhances BAFTA’s international identity as the centre of excellence for motion picture arts and games; integrating innovative state-of-the-art technology and cost-in-use efficiency, while sensitively balancing education/learning and public access, with members’ needs and revenue generation, ensuring the charity’s long-term social, environmental and economic sustainability. Includes: doubled capacity, 2 cinema theatres, banqueting hall, multipurpose event/exhibition spaces, UK’s first Clore learning space for moving-image arts, 4 kitchens/bars, members’ area/restaurant, boardroom, judging/meeting rooms, offices, 2 new roof terraces. Cutting-edge technology subtly integrated and sustained via BAFTA’s collaborative partnering with world-renowned firms Dolby, Christie, QSC, Merck, Noumena, etc. Invitingly transparent reception enhances awareness and accessibility. Classic palette of durable, sustainably sourced materials with varying textures, in a highly crafted suite of bespoke details, increasing in refinement on successive floors. Developed BAFTA’s brief focusing on robust flexibility, multiple concurrent uses and revenue expansion. Inventive combinations of areas, volumes, views, sequential movement allow theatrical ‘reveals’ for special events. UK premieres for innovative sustainable materials like liquid-crystal ‘smart’ glazing on top floor, and airborne carbon/nitrous oxides’ reducing 3D-printed bar-screen. Reduced carbon ±73% from ±155 to ±42 kg/CO2/m2 saving ±292 tonnes/year. Supportive liaison with landlord The Crown Estate, Historic England, Westminster, St. James’s Church.