dMFK completes Premium Workplace at GPE’s Grade II Listed 170 Piccadilly W1
dMFK has completed the refurbishment and reimagining of 170 Piccadilly, W1 by combining and transforming Grade II Listed buildings Egyptian House and Dudley House into an ultra-premium Fully Managed Workplace for client GPE.
Located in the heart of London’s West End, the 55,000 sqft seven-storey scheme blends restoration and contemporary office design to create a next-generation workspace that touches its historic host building gently.
Founded by three friends from architecture school, dMFK has grown over 25 years into a multi-award-winning practice of around 60 architects and interior designers.
Built in 1905 as a ‘gentleman’s chambers’, the 170 Piccadilly building was originally used as living quarters for wealthy men visiting London, with rooms arranged around deep, glazed, tiled lightwells. By the 1920s, it had been converted to office use. Successive, increasingly poor-quality alterations over the century gradually eroded the clarity of its elegant, historic fabric.
dMFK’s retrofit has revealed, restored and reimagined its character, repositioning 170 Piccadilly as London’s leading Fully Flex Managed Workspace.
dMFK Associate Director Joanna Ball said:
“We revisited 170 Piccadilly from a broader perspective to reveal its underlying character. Rather than drawing from the flex workspace pattern book, we set out to create a truly building-specific scheme that anchors this Grade II Listed landmark firmly in its location. Every design move, from spatial planning to joinery details, pays homage to the building’s heritage whilst delivering a workplace that feels unmistakably contemporary.”
Street level is dedicated to high value retail, so the hospitality driven club and arrival spaces occupy the first floor, overlooking an iconic south facing, tree planted courtyard garden.
The club includes a clay red board room illuminated by sculptural paper lights, a leather bar with a Spanish red marble bartop, shared work and bistro tables, team focus booths, a meeting room and break out spaces with carefully curated furnishings and fixtures that blend with the historic fabric.
Set above ground-floor retail, a landscaped rear terrace introduces an intimate garden atmosphere to the building’s amenity offering. Magnolia trees form a natural sunken grove; their roots set within woodland planting designed by Hortus Collective.
Within the garden, intimate scaled pockets are created for private meetings, whilst larger settings lend themselves to group collaboration and events. Whether working at a high table or relaxing on the banquette seating, customers are enveloped by calming greenery – a striking, calm contrast to the bustle of Piccadilly.
Two restored entrances to Egyptian and Dudley House – which together comprise 170 Piccadilly – celebrate the building’s renewed character. The retrofit connects the two elements at both upper floor and basement levels. Dudley now houses first-class end-of-trip facilities, which weren’t available within the building previously, and includes luxurious vanity rooms, spa-quality showers with cantilevered corian benches, and a contemporary bike store.
Carefully crafted details run throughout the building, giving the interiors a sense of quiet luxury. Inspired by the site’s pre-1905 life as a museum built in the ancient Egyptian style, geometric bow-tie motifs run through the building’s terrazzo flooring and custom dMFK-designed rugs – a design element that doubles up as a subtle wayfinding tool.
New joinery echoes the proportions of the building’s original panelling. Crafted from dark-stained European oak with crisp, contemporary edges, the joinery brings warmth and depth to the spaces and ties together custom pieces, including executive office and meeting room tables co-designed by dMFK and Rawside.
dMFK Associate Director Joanna Ball continued:
“Retrofitting listed buildings is rarely a linear process, but always an exciting one. At 170 Piccadilly, we uncovered a fragmented patchwork of historic cornicing – more than ten types in total – which we carefully repaired and extended using thousands of metres of new profiles. The strip-out also revealed a beautiful wrought-iron lift shaft, so we went back to the drawing board mid-delivery to ensure the design celebrated this heritage feature.”
As a Grade II Listed building, Westminster required the existing windows to be retained. The originals were carefully upgraded rather than replaced, using state-of-the-art, ultra-thin vacuum-sealed glazing by Fineo within the original sashes. This slimline retrofit approach achieves excellent thermal performance, significantly upgrading the performance of this historic building.
Floor levels have been carefully altered to accommodate low level mechanical ventilation, improving energy performance while preserving uninterrupted views of the historic windows. 170 Piccadilly is WELL Enabled, BREEAM Excellent and targeting a NABERS 4-star rating.