THE BUILDING MATERIALS “The Harbord Square brief was to create a building that could match the honesty, simplicity and robustness of the warehouse architecture, which dominated London’s historic wharfs. The solid brickwork façade is organized into simple vertical bays, with rhythmical brick piers. Decorative panels and crisply articulated cornices help define the window bays, roof line and grand two-storey base. Residential park-side entrances and retail units sit behind the deep, glazed-brick colonnades of the ground floor base to create an active frontage to the square. All open plan apartments have exposed brick walls, exposed servicing, large warehouse windows and exposed concrete ceilings. The quality of building materials is carried into the common parts with steel railings, concrete stairs, exposed services, and stencilled signage. We hope that the building will add to the growing diversification of uses at Canary Wharf to include small retail units, in the new `Lanes’, and help define `Harbord Square’ with a building that, on the one hand echoes the Wharf side history, while on the other will perform to highly sustainable modern standards, with a stripped back palette of materials and flexible space.” Paul Karakusevic - Founding PartnerKarakusevic Carson Architects MATERIALS