Housing • Finchley Lakeside

Our reinvention of this award-winning headquarters for a global sportswear brand is an exemplar for office to residential conversion.

Hidden away in a corner of Finchley is an oasis of creativity and nature in an otherwise unprepossessing suburban neighbourhood. Glimpsed from the North Line as it approaches Finchley Central station, until 2020 it was the global headquarters of Pentland Brands – owner of some of the world’s most famous leisure and sportswear.

With the opening of a new hub in Hatton Garden, the estate became surplus to requirements, and – following a competitive process – a team consisting of JTP, RCKa, and landscape architect BMD was appointed to develop a vision for the site, demonstrating how this remarkable lakeside estate could be reimagined as a new mixed-use destination for Barnet.

RCKa was tasked with finding a new life for the East Building – the only major intervention that Pentland Brands made in the site after acquiring it in the 1980s. Originally designed by architect Rock Townsend, the East Building acted as a state-of-the-art creative headquarters bringing together Pentland’s many sportswear brands under one roof, winning the British Council for Offices’ ‘Best of the Best’ award in 2003.

With Pentland’s commercial activities relocating to central London, the building became surplus to requirements, but at less than 25 years’ old – and representing a significant legacy for the company – demolition was considered to be undesirable. RCKa developed a strategy for converting the structure into a dynamic and desirable residential building, exploiting the central atrium and high floor-to-ceiling dimensions to craft unusual and exemplary new homes in the heart of Finchley Lakeside.

New incubator space and commercial units provide an active frontage to the main east-west route running across the site

Opening up the atrium to provide a dynamic, inhabited circulation space linking every residential floor to the commercial spaces below

The addition of two new residential floors provides dramatic views looking south towards London

“The building is exemplary in its parallel focus on fashion and enduring design. The life cycle inherent in each of these is different. Fashion is fast, good buildings are more timeless and robust.”

Ziona Strelitz, "Buildings That Feel Good", RIBA Publishing, 2008

Brand HQ into Living Lab

Our vision for the East Building is a thriving, mixed-use building with a dynamic link between the ground floor incubator and creative spaces and the upper residential levels – the central atrium is the connective tissue, with seating areas and space for gathering, encouraging social interaction within the buzz of the masterplan’s creative heart.

An existing ground floor swimming pool will be removed, and the topography of the site exploited to create a sunken courtyard, flanked by commercial spaces and hubs for start-ups and creative enterprise, supported by Pentland Brand’s ongoing legacy. This legacy continues through the integration of leisure and play within the landscape: a running track and climbing wall within the public realm, steps for exercise and a place to rest when you’re done.

On the upper floors we’ve carved careful apertures into the external skin, respectful of the building’s heritage and character, but enabling its adaptation into an exciting space for living.

More than 70% of existing building fabric retained

77 new homes

Client
Pentland Brands

Location
Barnet, London

Project Team
Katie Hackett
Andrea Villate
Emily Brown
Russell Curtis

Collaborators
Masterplanning & Residential Design: JTP
Landscape: BND
Planning Consultancy: HGH
Heritage: Montagu Evans
Sustainability: Max Fordham
Highways: Velocity

Project list