Eric Parry Architects
We design and create high-quality, people-focused, sustainable buildings that enhance their surroundings. We listen closely to our clients’ ambitions and needs and collaborate to meet every project’s particular challenges with our most creative and imaginative responses. Architecture should engage with its context and interact with its surroundings to create delight, enjoyment, and well-being for its inhabitants.
We have always taken a holistic, sustainable approach to our work, focusing on the building fabric, site considerations, energy use and green technologies. Longevity is a key factor in achieving genuine sustainability. The social and civic benefits of every scheme are paramount.
Eric Parry founded our London studio in 1983, and in 2013 we added our Singapore studio for projects in the Far East. Since its inception, dozens of talented individuals from diverse cultural backgrounds have joined the practice, and we are proud to have accrued a wide, rich and varied range of skills, cultures and experience.
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“Through delivering so many diverse London office buildings, Eric Parry has continually added to his urban repair toolkit. His buildings have an ongoing dialogue with the city and are built to last.”Cindy Walters, Architecture Today
Environmental, social and economic sustainability underpins everything we do as a practice and in every scheme we follow several principles of sustainable design. One is longevity and ensuring our buildings are built to last through attention to detail and the use of high-quality and durable materials. Another is creating buildings that consume less energy through low- and hi-tech technologies such as solar shading, maximising the use of natural light and ventilation, low-energy lighting and high-efficiency heat recovery systems. We also like to consider the embodied carbon of every project and are committed to circular economy principles and re-using and recycling materials as much as possible.
A very important principle for us, and one that has grown in significance over the years, is the health and well-being of building occupants. In all our schemes we ensure that factors such as appropriate occupant density, daylighting and lighting control, indoor air quality and adaptive thermal and acoustic comfort are prioritized and embedded into our design approach from the concept stages. Our buildings are also designed so there is a strong visual connection between internal and outdoor spaces.
We maximise outdoor amenities and urban greening and our developments always feature one or more of the following: green roofs or gardens, living walls and extensive planting on podiums, terraces, pavements and internal courtyards. This biophilic approach to design not only enhances the biodiversity and ecology of the surrounding environment, it also makes for more liveable interior spaces and improves the building’s energy performance.
As architects we work hard to transform the way people use and experience the space around buildings. We believe passionately in improving the quality of the public realm so that everyone – from city dwellers and the local community to visitors and office employees – can enjoy it. With cities seeing increasing density and increasingly constrained sites, our ambition should be to provide more public realm and gardens than before, and to do so in ever more imaginative and creative ways.
This is why many of our projects include extensive urban improvements that transform a scheme’s immediate surroundings, and the local environment. They range from simply reworking the edges of a streetscape to completely reconfiguring a whole area.
At 5 Aldermanbury Square, we raised the building to create public realm beneath the structure and a new square. At Fen Court, we implemented a new public passage linking Fenchurch Street and Fenchurch Avenue through the base of the building. Our scheme for what will become the tallest building in the City of London, 1 Undershaft, also creates new connections, seating, and retail areas at ground level.
In a similar vein, we strive, where possible, to design roof gardens in urban schemes. Primarily, they significantly contribute to a building’s ecological footprint by improving biodiversity and controlling the flow of rainwater. However, they also – along with other green spaces and terraces – enhance well-being by providing areas where building users can leave the ‘office’ for informal meetings and events, or a few moments of retreat, reflection and privacy.
Salisbury Square Development, London
The City of London Corporation has identified a unique opportunity to create modern facilities for both the City of London Police and Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) in the heart of the historic Square Mile.
Eric Parry Architect has been commissioned to design and deliver a new, purpose-built 18-courtroom legal facility called the City of London Law Courts and a cutting-edge police head-quarters equipped to combat fraud and economic crime across the UK.
Built to exemplar standards when it comes to accessibility and sustainability, the buildings are designed to last for at least 125 years. Salisbury Square will be enlarged and refocused as a gathering point for the development, somewhere people can enjoy.
11 Belgrave Road, London
11 Belgrave meets the highest sustainability and wellbeing credentials, taking its place as one of the capital’s most sustainable office buildings. Led by engineering consultancy Max Fordham, it has been designed to be net zero carbon in both construction and operation, surpassing the RIBA 2030 Climate Challenge target by 38%. Max Fordham have also led the NABERS process and the WiredScore Platinum and SmartScore Platinum targets, while environmental consultant Delta Green has advised on a design stage BREEAM ‘Outstanding’ rating and Ekkist on WELL Platinum.
1 Undershaft, London
A detail planning application was submitted to the City of London January 2016 for the 73-storey development at 1 Undershaft in the City of London. At 289.94m tall, it will rise to a height of 304.94m AOD (Above Ordnance Datum), crowning the new cluster of planned skyscrapers in the square mile.
The building will provide approximately 90,000 sqm of office space. The offset design of the core and the rigidity provided by the unique external bracing means floor space has been maximized providing much needed flexible, quality office accommodation for businesses in the City of London.
Fen Court, London
Eric Parry Architects’ new office development for Italy’s largest insurance company Generali is a 420,000 sq ft, 15-storey office building that provides commercial office space, retail use at the lower levels, a public passageway at street level and a publicly accessible roof garden, which was designed with German landscape architects Latz + Partner.
Fen Court comprises retail and office space which are contained within a volume of minimal yet sharp geometries with a crystalline appearance that constantly changes as it is activated by daylight and the weather conditions. It is an iconic building with a dynamic urban presence that is visible down the City’s many lanes and streets; a building of a hundred views.
“Fen Court is one of the most well-crafted buildings the City has seen for some time, and the generosity of its roof garden marks a welcome shift in the balance of private interest and public gain.”Oliver Wainwright, Architecture Critic, The Guardian
50 Fenchurch Street, City of London
50 Fenchurch Street is an island site bounded by Fenchurch Street, Mincing Lane, Dunster Court, and Mark Lane. The site is owned by The Clothworkers’ Company. Apart from the medieval Tower of All Hallows Staining and the subterranean Lambe’s Chapel Crypt, all the buildings were built after 1945. These buildings include the Clothworkers’ Hall, Minster House, 46-50 Fenchurch Street, 51-54 Fenchurch Street and St Olave’s Church Hall.
The proposed 50 Fenchurch Street includes two listed buildings, the Grade I listed Tower of All Hallows Staining and the Grade II listed Lambe’s Chapel Crypt. Neither are currently accessible to the public as they are on private land. 50 Fenchurch Street will provide over 62,000 sq m of flexible office space arranged around a central core. Floor plates vary in size’ to maximise the building’s appeal to a range of City occupiers.
R&D Headquarters, Singapore
Our proposal at One North Singapore combines signature architecture with high quality public realm to create a landmark headquarters building offering world class laboratories and office space. The building is organic in form and is characterised by tiered landscape terraces which provide a garden aspect to each office level. The envelope has ribbons of glass to provide 360 degree views.
The landscape design promotes biological diversity of ecosystems, habitats and biomes and butterfly conservation has been encouraged through the enhancement of habitats and planting. The tree density of the site was increased by 70%. Building on the strength of Singapore’s ‘Green City’ the project delivers a clear strategy for future tropical office architecture.
Kyobashi, Tokyo
The 180 metre-tall building is located at the end of Ginza’s Chuo-dori shopping street and will act as landmark visible along the length of the avenue. Urban greening on the lower level balconies will complement the vertical gardens of the building opposite to create a “green gateway” between Ginza and the neighbourhood of Kyobashi, an area known for its art galleries and antique shops.Kyobashi 3-chome is located within walking distance of Tokyo Station, the gateway to the international city of Tokyo. The building will feature direct access to Kyobashi station on the Ginza Line of the Tokyo Metro through its four-storey basement.
The project will introduce improvements to the public realm for pedestrians that include a connection to the new Tokyo Sky Corridor – a public space created on the upper deck of an elevated expressway that will be pedestrianised in a major new public-private partnership project. Construction is scheduled to begin in 2025 and be completed in 2029.
Granta Park Phase 2, Cambridge
Eric Parry Architect are developing detailed designs following the planning consent granted by South Cambridgeshire District Council earlier this year. The designs provide 368,000 sq ft of flexible lab / office space across five buildings at the Granta Park science park near Great Abingdon on the outskirts of Cambridge. The new buildings will be part of a 28 acre extension of the park, originally masterplanned by Eric Parry Architects in the 1990s.
Developed with BioMed Realty, a Blackstone portfolio company, the designs will help meet the urgent demand for Lab space in Cambridge in purpose-built accommodation designed specifically around the needs of post-startup / incubator biotech companies looking for space to scale their operations.
The five new buildings are targeting a 32% improvement on building regulation guidelines for energy performance and will be designed to meet the thermal standards set by the LETI Climate Emergency Design Guide. In addition they will meet the requirements of BREEAM Excellent, WELL Gold and WiredScore accreditation.
Interior Design
Our conception of interiors is eclectic and wide-ranging. We believe they should cater to everyday activities but also provoke a sense of delight, pleasure and well-being. We think textures, surfaces, materials, light and shadow play as significant role as larger objects and regularly collaborate with traditional craft disciplines, specialist makers and skilled manufacturing companies to achieve the most layered effects and add warmth, artistry and intimacy to domestic as well as corporate interiors and public spaces.
Our portfolio in this area includes residential projects both large and small, reception and communal areas in commercial, civic and public buildings as well as more intimate and sensual interior spaces such as hotel spas. We also collaborate with leading interior and furniture designers and implement schemes designed by others, ensuring a seamless project coordination.
