Centre Point

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For the British Charity, see Centrepoint (charity).
For Other uses, see Centerpoint (disambiguation).

Coordinates: 51°30′57.1″N 00°07′46.9″W / 51.515861°N 0.129694°W / 51.515861; -0.129694

Centre Point
Centre Point London.jpg
General information
Status Under Reconstruction
Type Office
Architectural style Brutalist
Address 101–103 New Oxford Street
Town or city London
Country England
Construction started 1963
Completed 1966
Renovated Start in 2016
Height 117m (385ft)
Technical details
Structural system Reinforced Concrete
Floor count 34
Design and construction
Architect George Marsh
Architecture firm R. Seifert and Partners
Structural engineer Pell Frischmann
Main contractor Wimpey Construction
Fountains at the base

Centre Point is a building in Central London, comprising a 33-storey office tower; a 9-storey block to the east including shops, offices, retail units and maisonettes; and a linking block between the two at first-floor level.[1] It occupies 101–103 New Oxford Street and 5–24 St Giles High Street, WC1, with a frontage also to Charing Cross Road,[1] close to St Giles Circus and almost directly above Tottenham Court Road tube station. The site was once occupied by a gallows.[2]

The building is 117 m (385 ft) high, has 34 floors[3] and 27,180 m2 (292,563 sq ft) of floor space. Constructed from 1963 to 1966, it was one of the first skyscrapers in London and as of 2009 is the city's joint 27th tallest building.[4] It stood empty from its completion until 1975,[5] and was briefly occupied by housing activists in 1974. Since 1995 it has been a Grade II listed building.[6] In 2015 it was converted from office space to luxury flats.[7]

Construction and history[edit]

The building was designed by George Marsh of the architects R. Seifert and Partners,[5][8][9] with engineers Pell Frischmann and was constructed by Wimpey Construction from 1963 to 1966.[10][1] for £5.5 million.[11] The precast segments were formed of fine concrete utilising crushed Portland Stone and were made by Portcrete Limited at Portland, Isle of Portland, Dorset. They were transported to London by lorry.[12]

Centre Point was built as speculative office space by property tycoon Harry Hyams, who had leased the site at £18,500 a year for 150 years. Hyams intended that the whole building be occupied by a single tenant, and negotiated fiercely for its approval; he was eventually approved to build 32 floors in return for providing a new road junction between St. Giles Circus, Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road, which the LCC could not afford to build on its own.

On completion, the building remained vacant for many years, leading to its being referred to as "London's Empty Skyscraper".[13] With property prices rising and most business tenancies taken for set periods of 10 or 15 years, Hyams could afford to keep it empty and wait for his single tenant at the asking price of £1,250,000; he was challenged to allow tenants to rent single floors but consistently refused. At that point, skyscrapers were rare in London, and Centre Point's prominence led to its becoming a rallying symbol for opponents.[13] Some campaigners demanded that the government of Edward Heath intervene and take over the building, and at one point in June 1972 Peter Walker (then Secretary of State for the Environment) offered £5 million for the building.[citation needed] Eventually, Hyams agreed to lease the building by floors but the arrangements were stalled.

In 1974 an umbrella group of Direct Action housing campaigners, including Jim Radford, Ron Bailey and Jack Dromey, organised a weekend occupation of Centre Point from 18 January to 20 January to draw attention to its being deliberately left empty during a housing crisis in London. (Two of the occupiers had obtained jobs with the Burns Security Company, who were guarding the building.)[14] The publicity around the occupation increased the political pressure on the government and local authorities to press for the development to be occupied and used.[citation needed] The housing charity Centrepoint had been formed five years earlier, and was named for the fact that its first night shelter was at the centre of the Soho parish, but after the occupation, the coincidence of its name with the building led to it being associated with the building as a symbol of the plight of the homeless.

From July 1980 to March 2014, Centre Point was the headquarters of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI); at 33 years and seven months, they became the longest-standing tenant.[4]

In October 2005, Centre Point was bought from the previous owners, Blackmoor LP, by commercial property firm Targetfollow for £85 million.[3] The building was extensively refurbished. It has since been purchased by Almacantar, who have received planning permission to further refurbish the building to plans by Rick Mather Architects.[11] As of 2009 occupants included US talent agency William Morris; the state-owned national oil company of Saudi Arabia, Aramco; Chinese oil company Petrochina; and electronic gaming company EA Games.[4]

Paramount[edit]

In Autumn 2008 Paramount, initially a private club but later opened to the public, was opened on the top three floors of Centre Point. The club was designed by Tom Dixon, and includes event space on the 31st floor, a bar and restaurant on 32nd, and a 360-degree viewing gallery on the 33rd floor – the top floor of the building.

Centre Point Observation Deck

Views from the venue have been described as spectacular.[15] Pierre Condou, the owner, negotiated a 35-year lease for the space.[16]

Apartment 58[edit]

In February 2013, the global members club for creative industries, ‘Apartment 58’, launched APT58 at Centre Point. The members' club, on the lower floors of the building, features a night club, meeting rooms, a locker and mail service and a young creative lounge. The venue also includes a late-license ground floor street-food concept restaurant.[17]

Transport[edit]

The Centre Point fountains have been removed as part of the demolition of the plaza for Crossrail.

The promised transport interchange and highways improvements were not delivered following the original plan. The pedestrian subway attracted anti-social activities.[13] On 19 June 2006 the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment pointed to the building as an example of bad design and noted that the around it force pedestrians into the bus lane and account for the highest level of pedestrian injuries in Central London. With the planned redevelopment of Tottenham Court Road Underground Station, a framework has been adopted to redevelop the traffic island beneath Centre Point as an open space.[18] The site of the plaza and fountains will be a work site for the Crossrail and station expansion works. The plaza is being demolished and the fountains have been removed.

Architectural reception[edit]

Architecture critic Nikolaus Pevsner described Centre Point as "coarse in the extreme".[5] In 1995 it became a Grade II listed building. In 2009, it won the Concrete Society's Mature Structures Award.[19]

Cultural references[edit]

  • Centre Point is featured in the 1977 horror film The Medusa Touch. A Boeing 747 aircraft is seen to hit the top of the tower and destroy it. The resulting collapse engulfs the Dominion theatre next door.
  • Centre Point is one of the locations Jim (Cillian Murphy) walks past in the 'deserted London' scenes of UK horror film 28 Days Later (2002). Director Danny Boyle also references it (as " 'Centre Point,' the famous empty/partially empty building in this busy section of London") on the DVD commentary.
  • The character "Old Bailey" camps on top of Centre Point at one point in Neil Gaiman's novel Neverwhere. He describes it as an "ugly and distinctive Sixties skyscraper" and goes on to remark that "the view from the top was without compare, and, furthermore, the top of Centre Point was one of the few places in the West End of London where you did not have to look at Centre Point itself".
  • The building is mentioned in the sixth episode of the BBC comedy series The Thick of It. During an inquiry into the UK government's culture of leaking information to the press, Stuart Pearson, a Conservative spin doctor, is asked about an analogy he has made between government transparency and the Pompidou Centre. A member of the inquiry suggests that rather than creating a "political Pompidou Centre," Pearson has created "the opposite, Centre Point - I mean everyone sees it looming over them but nobody has the faintest idea what happens in there." To which Pearson replies, "I think there's some kind of club on the top floor."
  • The building is also the location of the final battle scene and the headquarters for 'The Tower' in Kate Griffin's 2009 novel A Madness of Angels.

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b c Historic England. "Centre Point (1113172)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 3 April 2015. 
  2. ^ Peter Ackroyd, London: The Biography, Chatto & Windus, London, 2000. ISBN 1-85619-716-6
  3. ^ a b Targetfollow news archive, 06/10/05
  4. ^ a b c Targetfollow news archive, 11/08/09[dead link]
  5. ^ a b c Cherry, Bridget; Pevsner, Nikolaus (1988). London 4: North. The Buildings of England. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. p. 316. ISBN 0300096534. Retrieved 5 October 2014. 
  6. ^ Centre Point and Pond to Front, Camden, British Listed Buildings. Retrieved 8 December 2012.
  7. ^ Hilary Osborne, "Work begins on luxury flat conversion of London landmark Centre Point", The Guardian, 26 January 2015.
  8. ^ Stamp, Gavin (January 2011). "Seifert, Richard [formerly Rubin] (1910–2001), architect". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Online ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Retrieved 5 October 2014. In truth, the best and most famous building attributed to him was not his own design but that of the second partner in R. Seifert & Partners at the time, George Marsh 
  9. ^ Cruikshank, Dan (January 1995). "Centre Point 1966-1995". RIBA Journal (Royal Institute of British Architects) 102 (1): 39–45. What is certain is that the first set of drawings to show Centre Point virtually as built are dated September 1962 and are all drawn and signed by George Marsh, the partner in charge of the job. 
  10. ^ White, p. 26
  11. ^ a b Almacantar
  12. ^ "Portland; an Illustrated History" by Stuart Morris, The Dovecote Press
  13. ^ a b c Centre Point Tower, London: An architectural icon from the 1960s, London Landmarks, Urban75, April 2012.
  14. ^ Edward Platt, "Hot air over an office block: It's 25 years since the protests over Centre Point. Not much has changed", The Independent, 16 January 1999.
  15. ^ Paramount Bar by Tom Dixon (London)
  16. ^ Pierre Condou’s club at top of London’s Centre Point – The Condou set
  17. ^ "APT58". The Handbook. 25 February 2013. 
  18. ^ "Work starts on public plaza beneath Richard Seifert's Centre Point", De Zeen, 27 January 2015.
  19. ^ 43rd Concrete Society Awards

Sources[edit]

  • White, Valerie (1980). Wimpey: The first hundred years. George Wimpey. 

External links[edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Centre Point.
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