Castlewood & Medius House

Medius House at 63-69 New Oxford Street and Castlewood House at 77-91 New Oxford Street are being redeveloped. The new ‘The Earnshaw’ on New Oxford Street is a mixed-use development in London WC1.

The scheme comprises two new buildings on the former Castlewood House and Medius House sites. The first one consists of 18 residential apartments and the second is a 140,000 sq. ft. office building. Deconstruct were successful in securing the enabling works package at Castlewood and Medius House.

Castlewood House — a 9-storey building is to be demolished in its entirety with the construction of a new basement, partial double basement structure and subsequent 14-storey reinforced concrete core to be constructed as part of the enabling works package.

Medius House, split from Castlewood by an occupied building, is to have its internal structure demolished whilst retaining the façade and new reinforced concrete frame within the existing footprint. Ultimately, Castlewood and Medius House will provide a mixed-use development of commercial and residential space adjacent to Tottenham Court Road.

Typical of any central London enabling works project, Castlewood and Medius House is surrounded by busy highways. Extensive engagement with the local authority was required to agree to the necessary temporary traffic orders, allowing the project to achieve maximum efficiency in terms of logistical servicing of the site. The presence of a live-occupied building between Castlewood and Medius House presented the obvious challenge of understanding how the structure might remain without support from either side. It was deemed necessary that support towers would be required to offer lateral restraint to the structure in the temporary case.

The presence of temporary towers brings with it sequencing challenges during the substructure works. Temporary towers have been designed in such a way that they incorporate permanent piles, carried out in restricted access environments allowing the temporary towers to remain without affecting the basement works.

Further related to the Central London location, Central Line tunnels are present at the front of the site. Provision of method statements for London Underground sign-off and third-party movement monitoring is required whilst piling and basement construction takes place.

April, 2021

The term “topping out” refers to the installation of the final piece of structure; it signifies that the structure has reached its maximum height.

To celebrate this milestone for the topping out of the core for “The Earnshaw Building”, a ‘commemorative trowel’ was presented to Mark Carroll from our client Royal London Asset Management by Deconstruct’s Operations Director, Sam Peck.