Piercy&Company’s (formerly Piercy Conner) façade design wraps a residential block designed to provide accommodation for 268 Athletes during London’s 2012 Olympics. Generous classical proportions and refined art deco detailing produce a celebratory and commemorative façade fit for the Games.

Richly patterned, the design was inspired by The Running Man, Eadweard Muybridge’s photographic investigations into human movement. An abstracted linear pattern, strongly expressive of motion, was then cast into Portland concrete and picked out in contrasting glazed brick tiles to articulate and animate the envelope.

The design remains appropriate for the high quality, post-Olympic legacy scheme of eight townhouses and 32 apartments, with the façade pattern used to identify the two opposing housing typologies. A human scale application of the technique features on the first three floors of the townhouses, while an enlarged glazed brick version marks the transition to apartments on the upper levels above the street.

Source Piercy&Company website (formerly Piercy Conner).