New Court, the new London headquarters for Rothschild, and OMA's first building in London, has been completed. The 21,000m2 building is embedded in the narrow medieval alley of St Swithin's Lane in the heart of the City of London.

A subtle presence, New court is hidden within a cluster of buildings which form the historical core of the financial centre of the City. Surrounded by buildings of significance, the new development preserves and enhances this heritage while contributing a new dimension to the area. It emphasizes new connections within the dense streetscape, and offers views over the City from the 75-metre high Sky Pavilion.

New presence in the intricate City skyline. By OMA Philippe Ruault© All rights reserved.

OMA's design for New Court is the fourth building inhabited by Rothschild since 1809 on the architecturally rich site of St Swithin's Lane. Led by the OMA partners Rem Koolhaas and Ellen van Loon, OMA designed a building with most of its mass lifted up from the street, reinstating the visual connection between the Lane and St Stephen Walbrook church, built by Christopher Wren in 1680, which had been hidden from view following 200 years of development.

For the first time, New Court now has a generous and intriguiing relationship with its surroundings. Instead of competing as accidental neighbours, the church and New Court now form a twinned urban ensemble, an affinity reinforced by the proportional similarity of their towers.


Model: cube and four adjoining volumes. By OMA OMA © All rights reserved.

Koolhaas commented: "We lifted the building so the ground becomes a manifesto about the richness of London's history."

New Court is a combination of a cube -- for open-plan office space -- and four simple adjoining volumes for support facilities (circulation, reception, cafe, gym). The facade is in structural steel and dark glass. The top of the cube is a platform for a landscaped garden for hosting open air events.

Above the roof garden, the Sky Pavilion perches on pilotis, providing two storeys of double-height space for client meetings and events, and creating new, unfamiliar mid-level views over St Stephen's, the nearby St Paul's Cathedral, and the surrounding City. From Cannon Street and King William Street, and from across the Thames, the Sky Pavilion is a subtle addition to the City's intricate skyline.

Van Loon commented: "The exterior as well as the interior of the new building has been carefully conceived to create an inspiring building for Rothschild that establishes a new dialogue with the City."

Rothschild project manager Tony Chapman said: "Rothschild has made a commitment to the City of London that has endured across six generations. The new New Court is of significant historical and architectural importance and continues this commitment."

New Court is the second building completed by OMA this year in the UK after Maggie's Centre in Glasgow opened in October.


Program. By OMA OMA © All rights reserved.

FACT SHEET

Project.- Rothschild Bank Headquarters
Status.- Construction; completion expected 2011
Client.- NM Rothschild & Sons
Location.- St Swithin's Lane, City of London
Budget.- N/A
Site.- New Court, enclosed in cluster of buildings, adjacent to historic St. Stephen Walbrook church, main entrance on the narrow St. Swithin's lane
Program.- Office headquarters, 13,000m²

CREDITS

Partners in charge.- Rem Koolhaas, Ellen van Loon. Fit Out: Project Manager.- Carol Patterson. Project Architect: Elisa Simonetti

Team.- Jarek Kubik, Nina Sahebkar, Billy Choi (A&M), Andrew Dean (A&M), Saskia Simon, Katrien van Dijk, Jonah Gamblin, Anna Tjumina, Anna Pribylova, Lucia Zamponi, Nurdan Yakup

Stage D through construction: Project manager.- Carol Patterson. Team: Jarek Kubik, Elisa Simonetti, Isabel da Silva, with Dirk Peters, Rodrigo Vilas Boas, Anita Ernodi, Christoph Michael, Matt Brown, Jonah Gamblin

Planning permission & to Stage C: Project managers: Kunle Adeyemi, Adrianne Fisher. Team.- João Amaro, Clement Blanchet, Martin Gallovsky, Achim Gergen, Michel van de Kar, Keigo Kobayashi, Matthew Murphy, Daan Ooievaar, Marc Paulin, Christin Svensson, Daliana Suryawinata. Competition team:Matthew Logan Murphy, Jason Long, Anna Little, Haiko Cornelissen, Tiago Branco, Claire Destrebecq, Gustavo Guimarães, Marta Rodríguez Fernández, Nicolas Firket, Pascal Lestringant, Manuel Pelicano Moreira, Leoni Wen.

COLLABORATORS

Project manager:Stanhope. Executive architect.- Allies and Morrison Architects. Structure, services, fire engineering.- Arup. Cost consultants.- Davis Langdon. Construction manager.- Bovis Lend Lease. Planning consultants.- DP9. Property consultants.- Knight Frank Newmark. Townscape adviser.- Peter Stewart Consultancy. Rights of light.- GIA. Access.- David Bonnett Associates. Archaeology.- MOLAS. Façade: Front. Landscape.- Inside Outside.


Adjacent to St Stephens Walbrook church by Christopher Wren / Rarely visible in its entirety... / View from Sky Pavilion over rooftop garden and the City. By OMA Charlie Koolhaas© All rights reserved.

Ellen van Loon (Rotterdam, 1963) joined OMA in 1998 and became Partner in 2002. She has led award-winning building projects that combine sophisticated design with precise execution. Recently completed projects led by Ellen include the shop-in-shops for Jacquemus at Galeries Lafayette and Selfridges (2022), the temporary showroom in Doha and store on Avenue de Montaigne in Paris for Tiffany & Co. (2022-23), Monumental Wonders exhibition for SolidNature in Milan (2022). Bvlgari Fine Jewelry Show (2021), Brighton College (2020), BLOX / DAC in Copenhagen (2018), Rijnstraat 8 in The Hague (2017), and Lab City CentraleSupélec (2017). Other projects in her portfolio include Fondation Galeries Lafayette (2018) in Paris; Qatar National Library (2017); Amsterdam’s G-Star Raw Headquarters (2014); De Rotterdam, the largest building in the Netherlands (2013); CCTV Headquarters in Beijing (2012); New Court Rothschild Bank in London (2011); Maggie’s Centre in Glasgow (2011); Casa da Musica in Porto (2005) – winner of the 2007 RIBA Award; and the Dutch Embassy in Berlin (2003) – winner of the European Union Mies van der Rohe Award in 2005. Ellen is currently working on The Factory Manchester – a large performing arts venue for the city; the renovation of Kaufhaus des Westens (KaDeWe) Berlin – Europe’s biggest department store – and the design of Lamarr, a new department store in Vienna; and the Palais de Justice de Lille.

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Rem Koolhaas was born in Rotterdam in 1944. He began his career as a journalist, working for the Haagse Post, and as a set-designer in the Netherlands and Hollywood. He beganHe frequented the Architectural Association School in London and studied with Oswald Mathias Ungers at Cornell University. In 1978, he wrote Delirious New York: a retroactive manifesto for Manhattan, which has become a classic of contemporary architectural theory. In 1975 – together with Elia and Zoe Zenghelis and Madelon Vriesendorp – he founded OMA (Office for Metropolitan Architecture).

The most important works by Koolhaas and OMA, from its foundation until the mid-1990s, include the Netherlands Dance Theatre at The Hague, the Nexus Housing at Fukuoka in Japan, the Kunsthal in Rotterdam, the Grand Palais of Euralille and Lille, the Villa dall’Ava, the Très Grande Bibliothèque, the Jussieu library in Paris, the ZKM in Karlsruhe and the Seattle Public Library.

Together with Koolhaas’s reflections on contemporary society, these buildings appear in his second book, S,M,L,XL (1995), a volume of 1376 pages written as though it were a “novel about architecture”. Published in collaboration with the Canadian graphic designer, Bruce Mau, the book contains essays, manifestos, cartoons and travel diaries.

In 2005, with Mark Wigley and Ole Bouman, he was the founder to the prestigious Volume magazine, the result of a collaboration with Archis (Amsterdam), AMO and C-lab (Columbia University NY).

His built work includes the Qatar National Library and the Qatar Foundation Headquarters (2018), Fondation Galeries Lafayette in Paris (2018), Fondazione Prada in Milan (2015/2018), Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow (2015), the headquarters for China Central Television (CCTV) in Beijing (2012), Casa da Musica in Porto (2005), Seattle Central Library (2004), and the Netherlands Embassy in Berlin (2003). Current projects include the Taipei Performing Arts Centre, a new building for Axel Springer in Berlin, and the Factory in Manchester.

Koolhaas directed the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale and is a professor at Harvard University, where he directs The Project on the City, a research programme on changes in urban conditions around the world. This programme has conducted research on the delta of the Pearl River in China (entitled Great Leap Forward) and on consumer society (The Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping). Taschen Verlag has published the results. Now is preparing a major exhibition for the Guggenheim museum to open in 2019 entitled Countryside: Future of the World.

Among the awards he has won in recent years, we mention here the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize (2000), the Praemium Imperiale (2003), the Royal Gold Medal (2004) and the Mies Van Der Rohe prize (2005). In 2008, Time mentioned him among the 100 most influential people of the planet.

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Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) is an international practice operating within the traditional boundaries of architecture and urbanism. AMO, a research and design studio, applies architectural thinking to domains beyond. OMA is led by eight partners – Rem Koolhaas, Reinier de Graaf, Ellen van Loon, Shohei Shigematsu, Iyad Alsaka, Chris van Duijn, Jason Long, and Managing Partner-Architect David Gianotten – and maintains offices in Rotterdam, New York, Hong Kong, Doha, and Australia. OMA-designed buildings currently under construction are the renovation of Kaufhaus des Westens (KaDeWe) in Berlin, The Factory in Manchester, Hangzhou Prism, the CMG Times Center in Shenzhen and the Simone Veil Bridge in Bordeaux.

OMA’s completed projects include Taipei Performing Arts Centre (2022), Audrey Irmas Pavilion in Los Angeles (2020), Norra Tornen in Stockholm (2020), Axel Springer Campus in Berlin (2020), MEETT Toulouse Exhibition and Convention Centre (2020), Galleria in Gwanggyo (2020), WA Museum Boola Bardip (2020), nhow RAI Hotel in Amsterdam (2020), a new building for Brighton College (2020), and Potato Head Studios in Bali (2020). Earlier buildings include Fondazione Prada in Milan (2018), Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow (2015), De Rotterdam (2013), CCTV Headquarters in Beijing (2012), Casa da Música in Porto (2005), and the Seattle Central Library (2004).

AMO often works in parallel with OMA's clients to fertilize architecture with intelligence from this array of disciplines. This is the case with Prada: AMO's research into identity, in-store technology, and new possibilities of content-production in fashion helped generate OMA's architectural designs for new Prada epicenter stores in New York and Los Angeles. In 2004, AMO was commissioned by the European Union to study its visual communication, and designed a colored "barcode" flag, combining the flags of all member states, which was used during the Austrian presidency of the EU. AMO has worked with Universal Studios, Amsterdam's Schiphol airport, Heineken, Ikea, Condé Nast, Harvard University and the Hermitage. It has produced Countryside: The Future, a research exhibited at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York; exhibitions at the Venice Architecture Biennale, including Public Works (2012), Cronocaos (2010), and The Gulf (2006); and for Fondazione Prada, including When Attitudes Become Form (2012) and Serial and Portable Classics (2015). AMO, with Harvard University, was responsible for the research and curation of the 14th Venice Architecture Biennale and its publication Elements. Other notable projects are Roadmap 2050, a plan for a Europe-wide renewable energy grid; Project Japan, a 720-page book on the Metabolism architecture movement (Taschen, 2010); and the educational program of Strelka Institute in Moscow.

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Jason Long (OMA partner / OMA NY co-director) Jason Long is a Partner at OMA. He joined the firm in 2003 and has been leading OMA New York since 2014. Jason brings a research-driven, interdisciplinary approach to a wide range of projects internationally—from concept to completion, he served as the project manager for the Quebec National Museum in Quebec City and the Faena Forum in Miami.

A number of projects under his direction take a creative approach on the much-needed adaptive reuse and restoration of existing buildings, including POST Houston, the transformation of a former post office warehouse in downtown Houston into a mixed-use cultural platform, incorporating a new venue for Live Nation; the conversion of an Art Deco parking garage in New York City into a synagogue; the renovation of the Fitzgerald Building at University of Toronto into a new campus administration center; the adaptive reuse of Jersey City’s Pathside Building into museum for Centre Pompidou; and LANTERN, the conversion of a former commercial bakery into a community arts hub in Detroit.

Jason’s projects in urbanism and the public realm, particularly in Washington, D.C., public health, and equitable development at varying scales: a streetscape design for D.C. Convention Center, the 11th Street Bridge Park connecting disparate communities on either side of the Anacostia River, and a sports and recreation masterplan for the RFK Stadium Armory Campus.

His diverse portfolio extends to residential developments across housing types and regions in North America. Jason led the recently completed Eagle + West, OMA’s first high-rise towers in New York. In California, he oversaw the design and completion of The Avery in San Francisco and is currently leading 730 Stanyan, a 120-unit, 100% affordable housing building in historic Haight Ashbury. Currently in progress is The Perigon, a beachfront high-rise in Miami’s mid-beach neighborhood.

Jason previously served as a key member of AMO and was the Associate Editor of Content (Taschen, 2004).

Jason has lectured at SPUR, Urban Land Institute (ULI), AIA Conventions, and various museums and universities across the globe. He has been a visiting professor at Cornell University School of Architecture, Art and Planning (AAP).

Jason holds a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from Vassar College and a Master of Architecture from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design (GSD).
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