80 Charlotte Street.

Derwent London with Make Architects

A project for Derwent London by architects Make. This is a completely new building with only a small corner remaining from the original block. The entrance is a homage to the sculptures of Donald Judd the American artist who wanted to get as far away as geographically possible from the New York art scene and set up with DIA the Chianti Foundation in Marfa , Texas. The importance of the minimal simple corner detail with the thinnest possible material was a challenge. John was introduced to realise the project before any demolition of the original building was begun. As the material chosen was CorTen this required that the portal was made off-site a year before installation to allow the rusting process to establish. As always in commercial projects, this did not happen. However, the result of sandblasting the finished portal and wetting every day in the workshop in Cantù in Italy made the first rust crust stable. The desire was for a thin edge this is made to 80mm over a span of 10m and has a pre-cambered stainless steel internal skeleton to allow for the deflection over the full length when installed. The portal was installed in Summer 2019 and then sandblasted again to repair site damage and allow the crust to be more homogenous as it matured through the autumn and winter.