The Walbrook House

About the venue

The challenge in designing any new commercial structure in the City of London is to create a building that can both acknowledge its historical context and stand discreetly on its own terms.

The Walbrook replaces an undistinguished group of 1950s offices within the City's conservation area. Next to Wren's Church of St Stephen Walbrook and close to St Paul's Cathedral, it occupies a particularly sensitive site within a number of protected view corridors. Intended as the headquarters building for a major corporation, the building establishes a distinctive presence while respecting the scale of the neighbouring buildings. The line of the facade follows the curve of Walbrook, the processional route that runs alongside Mansion House, while a setback at the fifth floor aligns with the cornice of St Stephen Walbrook. The facade is articulated as a series of bays, which refer to the domestic scale of the buildings that originally stood here and have the effect of extending the site boundary to optimise the plan area.