Yalding House, on Great Portland Street in London’s Fitzrovia, was home to BBC Radio’s Music Department for over 60 years from 1952 to 2013. The 1930s office building housed Radio 1 and Radio 3, as well as the BBC’s Central Music Library. Following the relocation of the BBC, our brief was to carry out a comprehensive refurbishment which would return the building to office use.
Our first move was to insert a new core into a redundant lightwell to improve circulation throughout the building. On the office floors, we stripped away the accretions of decades of use and ad-hoc modification, revealing the original brickwork and structural elements. The resulting spaces are fresh-feeling and unadorned, giving fresh emphasis to the large floor-to-ceiling heights, celebrating the character of the original fabric.
