Central St. Giles Court is designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop Architects + Fletcher Priest Architects, The proposed concept for the site was to transform a single-use office building into a genuinely mixed-use development incorporating office, retail, restaurant and residential use; seeking to create a new destination integrated within the local area.

The architects chose to situate the buildings around a new courtyard in the center of the site, which is connected by a publicly accessible route and ground floor public uses to the surrounding streets and spaces.
Photography: Michel Denance
The key elements of the scheme were to introduce activity into the area, provide a mix of uses particularly retail, restaurants, and housing introducing daytime and night time surveillance, and creating a properly managed and controlled environment which is reflected in the urban design approach to the layout of retail units, spaces and pedestrian routes.
Located in Camden, the project is part of a complex urban patchwork of medieval streets, modern buildings, and traditional urban blocks. This environment had a dramatic impact on the design of the project.
Courtesy Of Joost Moolhuijzen
The scheme is composed of complex volumes, which are characteristically chiseled fragmented and reduced in scale to match the surrounding buildings. These chiseled volumes mad St-G an impressive architectural sculpture characterized by a combination of shimmering facets.

Each facet is unique, diff...