Duke of York Restaurant & Public Space

Cadogan commissioned Nex following an international design competition, with a brief to create a focal point for the Duke of York Square. Our competition proposal extended the brief beyond the restaurant, using the roof as a public garden, adding soft landscape and places to sit.

At the square's edge stands a curved Grade II listed wall, a remnant of the site's earlier military asylum. Inspired by its form, the new building spirals upward in a thin, off-white concrete wall that echoes the historic fabric beside it. A colonnade of slender concrete columns frames the restaurant, its curves echoing the modernist façade of the nearby Peter Jones department store. Within those curves, large plate glass windows can be fully retracted below ground, opening the interior to the square in fine weather, while the roof continues to provide shade above. The mechanism, as balanced as a weighted sash window sliding down into a basement trench, is the first retractable curved glass system in the world.

At the outermost edge of the spiral, an open staircase leads up to a roof garden, freely accessible to the public and independent of the space below. Finished in timber, and lined with large steel planters that follow the building’s spiralling shape to introduce planting, it adds seating where people can rest among the tree canopies above the bustle of the square below.

Inside, the concrete ribbon culminates in a service core at the heart of the restaurant. Polished structural arches reveal the natural patterning of the stone; black terrazzo floors, metal wall panelling and an acoustic ceiling of arranged ashwood slats continue the material rhythm of the spiral within.

High thermal mass, low-solar-transmission glazing, a bespoke airtight sealing system and an air-source heat pump contribute to its BREEAM Excellent rating.