James Riley Point

The innovative refurbishment of the JRP tower with the new community and sports facilities at its base, and reconfigures the building’s internal and external amenity spaces to meet modern housing policies, reduce the building’s embodied carbon and bring its 136 homes up to the Passivhaus EnerPHit Standard.

Illustrating that sustainable retrofit can be beautiful and architectural, the refurbishment of JRP rises from its plinth of eight sculptural columns (reminiscent of Le Corbusier’s Unité) and highlights the homes the tower affords with picture-box framed balconies designed to provide a sense of safety, security and enclosure.

These new policy-compliant balconies replace the existing shallow inset terraces which have been absorbed within to improve home internal areas, improve building form factor and eliminate thermal bridging.

At the same time, the external vertical grid of aluminium fins embraces the verticality of the tower, and provides shading to the glazing while allowing the desired levels of daylight within the apartments.

Inspired by the vibrancy of the diverse Carpenters community, and the historic legacy of the nearby 18th century Bow Porcelain factory, the building has then been clad in coloured glazed ceramics that give it a domestic and humanist quality, while celebrating JRP as a landmark building.