Rethinking the future of the retail high street experience, One Twenty King’s Road provides a forward-thinking blend of intelligently designed workspace, vibrant street-level retail, and dynamic leisure spaces across seven storeys.
Designed by Squire & Partners and developed by Crosstree Real Estate, the building replaces the outdated King’s Walk shopping centre, breathing new life into a prominent site on Chelsea’s King’s Road. This transformative project enriches the architectural fabric of Chelsea while improving the air quality of the surrounding area.
Client Crosstree Real Estate Partners LLP
CGI Artist CityScape Digital
Landscape Architecture PAD Landscapes
Structural Engineer Heyne Tillett Steel
M&E consultant MZA Consulting Engineers
QS Exigere
Acoustic Consultant MZA Consulting Engineers
Planning Consultant Savills
Project Manager Buro Four
2024 Commercial, Shortlisted
Brick Awards
Situated at the historic axis of Royal Avenue and the Royal Hospital, the building's rational brick façade references the grand brick buildings which distinguish the surrounding Conservation Area streetscape. Detailed analysis of this context in the early concept stages led the design team to employ a buff brick shade with a Flemish bond to echo the context immediately to the east of the site and the Duke of York Square.
The façades are articulated with arched brick fenestrations, curved green tiles, and dark metalwork, creating detail and richness. The decision to use reclaimed London Stock bricks – covering 43% of the building – generated five times less embodied carbon than new brickwork, as well as anchoring the new façade into its rich historical context.
On the upper levels, One Twenty King’s Road offers contemporary, flexible workspaces with external terraces that provide panoramic views down Royal Avenue. Internally, the design balances simplicity with opulence, reflecting the character of its Chelsea location.
At street level, fully glazed screens animate the retail frontage along King’s Road and Tryon Street, enhancing the high street experience. The design of the shopfronts was informed by a detailed study of King’s Road’s prominent retail façades, ensuring the frontage resonates with the area’s historic character.
A four-storey vertical garden, covering 23% of the external façade, enhances local biodiversity and air quality. Comprising 350 different plant species, the vertical garden serves as an urban oasis for wildflowers, bees, and other pollinators. It actively contributes to air purification, extracting up to 2.7 tonnes of CO₂ from Kensington annually, and helping to mitigate the urban heat-island effect.
Reducing the previous building's dependency on non-renewable energy sources, air source heat pumps and high-efficiency solar panels have been introduced to lower the operational carbon footprint by 35%.
As part of the project’s circular economy objectives, 68% of the existing building’s basement, lower ground and part of the ground floor structure has been retained.
