A new office development nestled between St Paul’s Cathedral and Ludgate Circus in London has been named as the City of London’s Building of the Year. It has also won the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors’ (RICS) top prize for Commercial Office Building of the Year 2016. And it was shortlisted for the New London Awards Office Building of the Year.

Known as the New Ludgate scheme, with Putney & Wood as the specialist stone contractor, the offices consist of two buildings, one of which includes a spectacular curved, textured Portland limestone feature wall in the reception area, where there is also Jura Blue Grey limestone flooring.

The feature wall is 8m high and 30m long; a homogenous, monolithic frieze with a canvas of Jordans Basebed Portland limestone in a contemporary, bold, geometric pattern.

It emphasises the open space through New Ludgate’s glazed double-height entrance into the street beyond. The aim is clearly to create a dialogue between New Ludgate and its imposing Portland stone neighbours.

The new buildings are a £260million development by Land Securities, providing 18,000m² of offices and 700m² of shops.

The architects / designers involved were Fletcher Priest, Sauerbruch Hutton and Gustafson Porter. Fletcher Priest designed One New Ludgate and oversaw the scheme. The main reception in Sauerbruch Hutton’s Two New Ludgate contains the feature wall in Portland stone.

Putney & Wood’s Mark Chapman (the design office manager) put his heart and soul into making the architect’s visuals for the frieze into a practical façade that could be built, detailing every stone and creating a 3D model as a final check before production began.

There was so much work involved that to keep to schedule three firms were involved in producing the stone – stoneCIRCLE, 3D Pierre (since re-named as Heres) and Albion Stone. Albion supplied the 85m3 of its Jordans Basebed Portland stone for the feature and other internal wall linings.

To manufacture the geometric pattern on the curved wall the latest CNC processing machinery was needed, working in conjunction with Putney & Wood’s detailing, although the stones were hand finished.

On site, Putney & Wood’s team mechanically fixed each textured panel, alignment being complicated by the joints flowing with the vertical curvature of the stone.