The Apartment That You Build Yourself - Park Road Apartments by Nicholas Grimshaw & Terry Farrell

125 Park Road was designed in the late 1960s by the architects Farrell/Grimshaw Partnership for the Mercury Housing Society. Both Sir Terry Farrell and Sir Nicholas Grimshaw were members of the society and lived in the block. It was their second scheme and, when listed as a grade 2 building in 2001, was commended for pioneering the British High Tech architecture movement.
Recognised as one of London’s most significant modern apartment buildings, the pioneering design of the Park Road Apartments was the first residential project in the UK with a central core.
Borrowing from principles of commercial floor plans with lifts, stairs and bathrooms at the centre, the open-plan living spaces offered unprecedented flexibility for owners, with more than 70 variations of plan possible for the 40 flats and penthouses. Most internal walls are non-loadbearing which allows flats to be combined as larger units. This shows the benefits of designing residential accommodation on the same principles as commercial offices where habitable space is freed by concentrating services in a central core.