The Cadogan Estate own and manage a large swathe of property in Kensington. One of Cadogan’s long term goals is to extend its retail offering further south down Sloane Street from Knightsbridge.

50 Sloane Street is a large, early 20th century, 10 storey block. Most of the street frontage was retail, while the final bay was residential. As part of the refurbishment on this property, it was proposed to lower the ground floor to street level, and then corresponding ground area was then lowered by 1.6m to provide good quality retail space. In addition, the façade was converted to a large opening, removing one column and re-supporting it on a steel picture frame.

The existing building is a steel frame with concrete slabs. The pre-existing large pad foundations sat directly below the basement slab – in order to lower the floor they needed to be removed. During the removal, the 8 residential storeys above remained occupied, providing challenges in the temporary works design.The main challenge presented was figuring out how to re-support all of the columns to allow their removal and the construction of new foundations, and column extensions before the new floors were installed.

We were appointed to provide the permanent works design and developed detailed assumed sequence and temporary works drawings, which the contractor adopted.