Hamiltons Glass Snail Slithers Into Hammersmith

Development Securities has secured planning permission for a new largely office ten story scheme in Hammersmith.

The project will sit on a site, currently a car park owned by Transport for London. It is next to Beedon Road and Hammersmith Grove with the Hammersmith & City Line underground station next to it. It has been developed by Development Securities in partnership with Royal London and the National Bank of Dubai who are providing much of the funding.

With a budget of £250 million it will contain 30,193 square metres of offices, a new 1,858 square metre multiplex cinema and 1,393 square metres of retail space for restaurants and cafes. There will also be a new pedestrian route from Beadon Road to Lyric Square.

It's been designed by Hamiltons Architects who have come up with what is essentially a glass version of a snail shell. The organically curving shape serves has many advantages over a traditional block including minimizing the visual impact of the development and creating something with a substantially softer look.

How successful this design approach is will depend as much on the finished cladding as the relatively unusual shape. Foster's London Assembly shows what can happen if the cladding looks cheap - the resulting building also ends up looking bargain basement.

Thankfully, for a decent specification office building such as this, that result is much less likely than London's original testicle.