Brady Street, Whitechapel

Client: Sainsbury’s
Value: £16M
Status: Completed September 2010

The project was born out of a requirement to keep a busy food retail store trading whilst half of its site was taken by Crossrail for five years. The response required the creation of a new three storey car park on the reduced site; connected to the store via an atrium containing vertical circulation and a cafe on the ground floor in a highly constrained site. Working with Buro Happold, the car park structure had to be designed to allow for the movement and settlement caused by Crossrail’s tunnelling below the site.
Photographer: Simon Kennedy

Fast construction time was paramount. Use of pre-fabricated components and super scale cladding panels reduced on site disruption and build time. Architecturally, a ribbon of printed fabric panels wraps and unifies the atrium and parking decks in a ‘pattern of produce’ to create an abstract shop window onto Brady Street and Cambridge Heath Road.