8 Bleeding Heart Yard
by GROUPWORK
Client Seaforth Land Holdings
Award RIBA London Award 2025
The award winner tells us: "8 Bleeding Heart Yard reimagines the pre-1970s accumulation of mid to late Victorian shops, warehouses and townhouses on this site in Hatton Garden that were demolished to make way for the concrete-framed ribbon-windowed office building that has stood since.
The project actively explores the emblematic 鈥楰unstform鈥� of a misremembered past embodied in a 3mm perforated recycled metal fa莽ade, concealing new timber roof and rear extensions, and upgrades the existing envelope and internal organisation to suit a modern office environment. From a distance the building creates the illusion of permanence, of the authenticity and security of an often idealised past.
On approach this perceived solidity is nothing but a mirage, with details slipped, abstracted and transparent, an incomplete memory and in the manner of Palazzo del Te鈥檚 apparently falling pediments and triglyphs, the expression of a fa莽ade as non-structural, decorative and abstracted from earlier tectonic forms."
The jury says: "Photovoltaic panels, high levels of insulation and airtightness and an air-source heat pump all contribute to impressively low in-use energy credentials. Forensically studying archival evidence of the predecessor buildings that had once occupied the site 鈥� a range of Victorian shops and houses 鈥� the architects sought to recreate the historical roofline and fa莽ade arrangement. This they achieved by effectively applying a new shroud which replays the past, on top of the 1970s shell."
Contractor RED Construction
Structural engineer Atelier One
Sustainability Buro Happold
Environmental/M&E engineer Webb Yates Engineers
Project management Avison Young
Quantity surveyor/cost consultant Quantem
Acoustic engineer Sandy Brown
Gross internal area 3,386尘虏
