St. Monica’s Hoxton ← Works ← Henley Halebrown

St. Monica’s Hoxton London 2001–2004

This Grade II listed ex-London Board School, designed by the Gothic Revival architect E. W. Pugin, has been conserved and extended to house the Hoxton Apprentice restaurant and training facilities, offices, a gym and two apartments.

‘The garden […] here shows a thoughtfulness which goes far beyond native intelligence and begins to show devilish ingenuity’ Robert Maxwell, 2005

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On the roof, a single-storey star-shaped structure accommodates a new penthouse apartment. Its mirror-glazed elevations reflect the surrounding roofscape
For a building of this era, the façade to Hoxton Square is uniquely flat and rectangular. The ground floor classroom windows have been replaced with doors to serve the restaurant
The existing long section reveals the unusual scale of this 3-storey building with its 5m storey heights
Long section following adaptation shows the three primary interventions - playground extension to house the gymnasium, mezzanines within the classrooms and the penthouse
A sequence of four hallways step deep into the plan, leading ultimately to a new lift. The third is a red timber panelled room overlooking a garden
The green mirror glass walls that line this new and strangely shaped garden accentuate the green hue of the ferns, especially when seen from the red timber panelled hall
Aerial view of the mirror-lined courtyard garden
Ground floor plan - the original entrances are reconfigured to accommodate the many different organisations and individuals that share the building
A range of timber shutters in the wall…
...and skylights naturally ventilate the Douglas fir ply-lined gymnasium interior
The roof and rear wall of the gymnasium have been treated as one continuous timber surface. The roof is punctuated by flush but operable skylights
Inside each original whitewashed brick-lined classroom, the design introduces a stressed-ply timber-clad mezzanine (and stair). The matchboard detail provides a wearing surface appropriate to the age of the building

architects Henley Halebrown

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