WELCOME This consultation pack provides you with a chance to view the emerging proposals and give us your thoughts. Please do note the various contact details listed in the final section if you wish to speak to a member of the project team, organise a briefing or provide us with your thoughts on the proposals. This pack presents our aspirations to redevelop One Museum Street (also known as Selkirk House) - a now vacant site on Museum Street and High Holborn following the closure of the Travelodge in 2020 and its adjacent buildings on West Central Street. The proposals include new office space, active ground floor uses and homes. THE TEAM LabTech aspires to curate destination landmarks, flexible working, residential, retail and food & beverage communities. Harnessing unique and independent concepts, we create an experiential lifestyle ethos ensuring we deliver dynamic live/work/stay propositions across the globe. Utilising leading technology, LabTech weaves the latest in digital transformations into the everyday. Our vision is to become a leader in creating eco-systems, moving retail/living and working into a new era. DSDHA (Architecture, Urban Design & Research Studios) has created an internationally acclaimed body of work that is engaged in bringing new forms of responsive design and sustainability through active design and research to address client’s needs. By adopting a people-centred approach, we deploy our spatial intelligence across a broad range of scales - from infrastructure to intimacy - to produce spatial strategies and designs that tap into each project’s latent potential to foster positive change, in balance with nature and the planet. Our work in Camden spans the last decade and includes both built and ongoing architectural, urban and public realm projects – Corner House, Suffolk House and working with Camden Council on the West End Project and Central Somers Town Masterplan. 1 Museum Street and West Central Street - Stage 2 Report - September 2020 3.0 Urban Approach 3.1 Existing Context: Constraints MUSEUM STREET 4.1 Opportunities & Constraints 01: Car park - Structure/Massing: • Scale & form mismatch with surroundings: Ramped BLOOMSBUY WAY floor levels COPTIC STREET • No frontage activation to West Central Street or Mu- seum Street • Negative contribution to streetscape BLOOMSBURY STREET SITE LOCATION AND CONTEXT • Poor site connectivity- presents a poorly articulated shear face to surrounding streets 02: Ramped open space: • This is not public space and an uninviting dead end • Base of car park ramp attracts rough sleeping NEW OXFORD STREET • Boundary wall to rear of Grape Street has poor visual qualities MUSEUM STREET 03: Selkirk Tower - Structural frame • Tower location intrudes in sightlines from key views. • Existing core locations concentrate mass towards WEST CENTRAL STREET north and south ends of the tower form (Currently blank façades with advertising) 02 • Structural walls limit potential of Museum Street frontage GRAPE STREET • Typical Floor to floor heights @3.1m • Transfer structures are suited for car park use - se- 03 HIGH HOLBORN verely compromises lower level adaptation. 01 DYOTT STREET SHAFTESBURY AVENUE Aerial map showing site of One Museum Street/Selkirk House and West Central Street buildings. Key: Museum Street Site Coptic Street View Site Boundary Unactivated / Blank Frontage Obstruction:The Site Existing isCore boundedLocation by High Holborn to In the first half of this year the hotel Obstruction: Museum Street Shear Wall West Central Street Planning context Existingthe Retainedsouth, Trees Museum Street to the east operator took the decision that this site and New Oxford Street to the north with was surplus to requirements and would The West Central Street buildings are 1 Museum Street is identified within the rear of the properties fronting Grape therefore remain closed, so it is now a predominantly in retail use at ground floor the emerging Holborn Vision and Urban level fronting New Oxford Street. The Strategy as a ‘key project’ for potential Site Plan 1.500Street - (Includes forming West End Improvements) the western boundary. vacant site. West Central Street dissects the site basement, first and second floors of No. redevelopment as its location will benefit Recently NCP have taken steps to reduce 39 – 41 are in office use with the upper from increased transport capacity and and separates out the53 existing Selkirk the antisocial behaviour within the car House from the New Oxford Street / West floors of 35 – 37 being in residential use. wider connectivity due to the opening park by installing shutters and gates Central Street block (known as ‘The West No’s 16a, 16b and 18 West Central Street of Crossrail. across their boundary ensuring that it is were previously in use as a nightclub Central Street buildings’). The site is fragmented, and its far more secure. at basement level with offices above composition has resulted in Selkirk House although this section of the block is providing areas for anti-social behavior currently vacant. The site currently comprises Selkirk to take place. In line with the wider House, which is ground plus 16-storeys Previous planning permission was improvements being made to the Holborn in height and is predominantly occupied granted on West Central Street for a area, there is an opportunity to provide by the former Travelodge building with an part refurbishment, part new building improved pedestrian connectivity. NCP car park set across the basement to development comprising 19 homes second floor level. alongside ground floor shops and cafes Prior to 2020, the former Travelodge and a workspace. This acted as overspill provision to the planning permission has however never Travelodge hotel located at High Holborn. West Central Street Site been implemented. SITE LOCATION AND CONTEXT Wider context 20th Century tall buildings Selkirk House lies just outside of the Bloomsbury Conservation Area, whilst the West A number of large-scale developments during the post-war period altered the urban Central Street section of the site lies within the Conservation Area. grain of the stretch between Tottenham Court Road and Holborn Stations. These Outside of the red line boundary, abutting the site, there are two Grade II listed include: Centre Point; St Giles Court; Selkirk House; the NCP Car Park; the Royal Mail buildings on the West Central Street block. Nearby 16a-18 West Central Street are Sorting Office and developments along the southern frontage of High Holborn. noted as positive contributors due to their group value in conservation area terms. These buildings are typically characterised by lower levels of permeability, with low levels of activation at ground floor level, which in turn result in a poor quality of public realm and areas which lack natural surveillance, causing anti-social behaviour. Recent work to reinstate and repair the urban grain has been successful through improvements such as Central St Giles, the closure of St Giles High Street to form St Giles Square and the ongoing West End Project. Works are also underway on Outernet Global Ltd’s St Giles Circus development, which comprise a mix of uses, including a flexible urban gallery, two events venues, a hotel, public realm, office space, restaurants, bars and retail shops. 1 Museum Street and West Central Street - Stage 2 Report - September 2020 St Giles Hotel 125 Shaftesbury Avenue Selkirk House Holborn Tower 90 Long Acre (Site) The Bloomsbury Travelodge Stephen Street Centre Point Central St Giles Building Gillian Lynne Theatre Post Building 31 1 Museum Street and West Central Street - Stage 2 Report - September 2020 SITE2.0 HISTORY Site and Urban Analysis 2.4 Historical Context 1560 – Early formation 1890 – Configuration of of High Holborn and site remains unchanged. Drury LaneStreet Formations Extension of Shaftsbury 1560 Avenue to New Oxford • Early formation of High HolbornStreet, and Drury chamferring Lane. Development 1658 – 1658 corner of Vine Street. around road• Development intersection around road intersection grows. grows. • Rough position of site defined by hedgerows and planting. Rough position of site 1910 – Vine Street defined 1720by hedgerows becomes Grape Street • Developed street patterns created from former and planting.hedgerow boundaries. as partof C, F, Doll reconstruction, 1560 1658 1720 1755 re-estabilishing strong • North to south road access through the site closed 1720 – Developmentalong Broad Street (High throughHolborn) boundary, route to street patternsforming created internal courtyard. Broad Street • Brewer and Hyde Street formed, now West Central from formerStreet. hedgerow boundaries. 1870 1950 – WWII bomb • New Oxford Street formeddamage on northern to southsite eastern boundary. part of the site. 1755 – •North South toend Southof Vine Street closed off and cut through road accessformed through to Broad the Street (High Holborn). site closed• alongActive shopBoard frontages identified along Museum Street (High Street.Holborn) 1960 – Large scale boundary,1890 forming internal development of site, courtyard.• Configuration of site remains unchanged.creating 16-story Selkirk • Extension of Shaftsbury AvenueHouse to New (Travelodge) Oxford and 1755 1870 1890 Brewer and Street,Hyde chamfering Street corner of Vineadjoining Street. NCP car park. Formed now1910 West Central Street.• Vine Street becomes Grape Street as part of C. F. Doll reconstruction, re-establishing strong through route to Broad Street. 1870 – 1950New Oxford Street Formed• WWII on bomb northern