St Paul’s Knightsbridge, London
SIZE: 1015SQM GEA, plus landscape and refurbishment
COST: £7-10M
Designs include: cloister, music school, consultation and meeting rooms, creche, new vestry, atrium, reception and new support spaces.
The C19th, listed church, located behind Hyde Park Corner has a growing congregation and is popular for society weddings and high profile music by BBC. Royalty, prime ministers and celebrities have all attended.
The project will provide further opportunity for congregation within the spiritual and day to day realms. A new accessible, civic entrance will be created with basement under part of the church nave. A cloister will be wrapped around the church in a reinterpretation of the cathedral form to give additional spaces. The west end tower and vestibule stairs shall be reconfigured to give an improved welcome and relocated parish office with meeting space that looks back down the rich existing nave.
‘At St Paul’s, we felt that our architect would need breadth of experience as well as the ability to interpret our needs and pull together an unobstructed vision from our disparate requirements. He would also need to be able to communicate with many different stakeholders, from local planners to the congregation.
‘Paul has listened and created an empathic and elegant solution for us, and a vision that was more than we had hoped for. I believe that the proposed development will help ensure that St Paul’s has a flourishing role in the future.’
Fr Alan Gyle, Vicar of St Paul’s