A marketing suite and movable show flat for a residential development in Westminster. The core idea is direct: prospective buyers should experience their future home at the actual height it will occupy.
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Reference
01
The brief was not to display an apartment. It was to prove a view.
In Westminster, the value of a high-level apartment is inseparable from the view. A ground-level show flat could not answer that condition. The project therefore makes elevation the origin of the architecture. The building had to lift experience, not just describe it.
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System
02
The lifting mechanism organises the building.
The fixed programme includes reception, meeting rooms, models, a 4D cinema, staff accommodation and support spaces. These sit in an elevated slab lifted on four fluted columns. Three columns contain stairs, lifts and services. The fourth contains the structural and mechanical core for the movable show flat. A counterweighted system driven by high-torque electric motors raises and lowers the show flat to any floor level of the proposed tower.
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Resolution
03
The show flat does not simulate height. It achieves it.
A buyer standing in the show flat sees the view their apartment would command. The rest of the building remains fixed. Only the show flat moves. The mechanism is contained within a single column, leaving the concept clear from outside and precise from within. Planning permission was granted in 2008 before the project was later set aside.
Project designed by Steven Chilton as project director at Marks Barfield Architects.
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