On London’s South Bank contractor 8Build has completed a timber-framed restaurant next to the National Theatre. The £740,000 temporary building was designed by Benjamin Marks, the son of David Marks and Julia Barfield, founders of Marks Barfield, architect of the nearby London Eye.
The Green Room is the second building to be constructed as part of the Coin Street Community Builders’ (CSCB) redevelopment of its Doon Street site. It follows the Vinci-constructed and Allies & Morrison-designed Rambert Dance School next door, which was completed in 2013.
The building has planning permission to occupy the site for the next five years and will operate until phase two of Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands’ masterplan, which includes a 43-storey residential tower and leisure centre, is completed in 2019.
The restaurant is “designed to be deconstructed”
Marks took inspiration from the Architype-designed office that previously occupied the site. It was built in 1988 with a bolted-together timber frame, in homage to self-build pioneer Walter Segal. Along with Matt Atkins, Marks led the project to dismantle and reconfigure the building as a community centre in Stockwell.
Like the offices it replaced, the restaurant is “designed to be deconstructed” says Marks. “It was put together in a way that you could take it apart”. Many of the building’s elements, including the timber frame and stone columns bound together with lime mortar, are designed be reused.
The restaurant will eventually make way for an office and education block with a public square, the final phase of the Doon Street development, that will complete the “terrace” of buildings.
