Waterloo Place, before and after

7-10 Waterloo Place is a Grade II listed building within the St. James’s conservation area of Westminster.

We were delighted to be appointed by Barings to produce a set of marketing images for the refurbishment of 7-10 Waterloo Place. Whilst maintaining the period features of the existing building, Morrow + Lorraine were tasked with designing a modern fit-out which was sympathetic to the retained detailing, whilst introducing a modern elegance to the space. 6 images were commissioned to support Cre8te’s new brand for the development. 2x reception, 2x office, 1x lift and 1x fifth floor terrace view.

The challenge for us was undoubtedly recreating the period features. Highly ornate capitals, and ceiling moldings across all floors needed to be replicated in 3D, along with textures of the existing aged marble, which existed in huge slabs in the reception and then smaller tiles up through the stair walls.

We had been looking for an opportunity to explore 3D scanning techniques to capture the retained elements, and this seemed like an ideal project to test it out. A site visit soon quashed this idea as construction was now well underway and the boards were up to protect the period detail from damage!

So, using reference photography of the pre-construction details, we resorted back to conventional 3D techniques and began poly-modelling cherubs, and fruit clusters. We sourced high resolution marble photography from a local marble supplier, who was surprisingly happy to help. We then aged the textures in keeping with the marble on site, and sub-divided into tiled textures for the stairs.

As with all our work, we accommodated a number of design changes from Morrow + Lorraine, who took the opportunity to refine their design as the images came together. The desk evolved, the pendants changed and the branding on the rear wall was modified to better suit the space.

Upon completion of the refurbishment, Morrow + Lorraine commissioned photography (© Simon Maxwell Photography.) They instructed their photographer to replicate the views we had created in 3D. This presented a rare opportunity for us to compare before and after, and assess how faithfully we had represented the scheme. There were obvious amendments to the design after the CG process, but otherwise we were very pleased with how accurately we had depicted the scheme.