AHMM’s mixed-use development in west London is helping to redefine the role of the Grand Union Canal, connecting heritage inspiration with modern co-living approaches. Stephen Cousins reports.
Stretching for over 137 miles, the Grand Union Canal was once a crucial artery linking the industrial Midlands with London, used to transport coal and iron to drive the Industrial Revolution and, in the 1920s and 30s, bringing sand, gravel, and timber by barge to the capital to build out new suburbs.
Commercial traffic ceased on most of the network in the 1970s, and today the stretch of waterway passing through London is a much more tranquil affair, used primarily for boating, walking and cycling, serving as a scenic backdrop for a growing community of narrowboat owners.
A programme of major redevelopment along the canal is transforming many brownfield and underused industrial sites into mixed-use, residential-focused hubs. The latest of these is Mason & Fifth Westbourne Park, a 332-unit flexible living development built on the site of the former headquarters of London’s Licensed Taxi Drivers’ Association.
Designed by AHMM and interior architect TiggColl for investment manager Cheyne Capital, the scheme is operated by boutique co-living provider Mason & Fifth. It comprises a cluster of blocks, ranging from four to 12 storeys, wrapped around an urban courtyard that opens onto the canal.
The development aims to foster a new community of young creatives and entrepreneurs, by offering a combination of short and long stay accommodation and multiple amenity spaces. Publicly accessible amenities are woven into the ground and lower ground floors to make the development relevant and accessible to local residents.
The varied urban context, characterised by cobbled streets with small scale offices and residential, the huge concrete canopy of the A40 Westway dual carriageway and the canal itself, were key inspirations for the building’s exterior form, colours and materials.
According to Hazel Joseph, director at AHMM, the need to “respect the materiality and domestic scale of neighbouring buildings” informed the decision to design “a series of three smaller buildings” along the street, rather than a singular frontage and extensive use of brick and Crittal-style windows. To the south, a 12-storey tower and a public space with tiered seating make more of a physical impact “marking out the Mason and Fifth hotel from the Westway and those more southerly views.”
Joseph adds: “When you walk around the site, it’s very different depending on where you look, the spaces and the vistas open up as you move through it.”
Community living
Westbourne Park is London-based Mason & Fifth’s third property built around the concept of flexible stays, and is its biggest to date. The Westbourne Park scheme combines the functions of a traditional hotel with residences and short stays.
The building was originally designed by AHMM for co-living operator The Collective and planning permission was granted in 2019. The Collective fell into administration in 2021, and Cheyne Capital ultimately teamed up with Mason & Fifth to deliver the revised final project.
“It was always considered to be a very mixed use scheme, combining places for people to stay and work, with a significant quantity of leisure and amenity,” says Hazel Joseph, adding that the project was subsequently honed for Mason & Fifth to meet “the level of amenity and the provision of affordable workspace and community space” that it needed.
Westbourne Park targets an increasing demographic of mobile workers attracted to London’s thriving creative and technology sectors, acting as a one-stop-shop for all their needs. The development provides 332 private studios and a range of spaces for work and leisure activities, including exhibitions, performance, classes, and eating and drinking facilities.
Studio sizes range from 12-14 m2 for a small unit up to 20-30 m2 for the largest units, and all are furnished, and feature an ensuite bathroom with a waterfall shower. A finished floor level to ceiling height of around 2.8 metres ensures a consistent facade expression and maximises natural daylight penetration.
On a typical floor, rooms are positioned around the central courtyard space, extending to the south west corner of the site, and served by north and south stair and lift cores. An additional escape staircore on the north east corner emerges onto Woodfield Road.
Communal spaces are spread across three floors – two at the base of the building, the third at penthouse level.
At street level, the main entrance and reception lounge open directly onto the courtyard, there’s also a listening room and a co-working lounge with an external terrace overlooking the canal. A cycle workshop and food and beverage shops animate the courtyard edge, and to the north, commercial workspace spans two levels with primary access from Woodfield Road.
A floor down, at canal level, a restaurant to the south east of the site sits alongside a cinema room. Underneath the courtyard, is wellness suite with a swimming pool, sauna, steam rooms and a gym extends under the courtyard.
According to Joseph, the courtyard roof, which forms the soffit to the spa below, was a particular technical challenge for designers due to the significant loads involved and the need to integrate rooflights and related waterproofing details.
Also at canal level, a pavilion on the south western edge houses two levels of affordable workspace and a flexible events space.
Residents on the 10th storey of the tower have access to shared kitchen and dining areas, and a lounge with views onto the canal.
The site plan for Westbourne Park is split along the north-south axis by a new public route connecting the road to the canalside, which widens as it descends via a staircase to the water. The route functions as the entrance to the scheme, penetrating the brick facade at street level and bringing visitors into the new courtyard, which is recessed and partially hidden from the street to create a sense of an unexpected discovery in the heart of the old city.
The route opens out as it descends to the tow path, incorporating areas of tiered seating alongside the staircase and offering attractive views of the waterway and newly planted trees, which partially screen the Westway trunk route along the south edge.
Historic – with a bit of grit
The historically and materially diverse local urban context provided a treasure trove of inspiration for AHMM. The site is located within the Maida Hill neighbourhood, near Notting Hill, on Woodfield Road, and extends back to the Grand Union Canal tow path to the south. Buildings on the street include a mix of residential, offices, light industrial buildings, two pubs and the headquarters of a local arts company.
Large buildings occupy the east and west flanks: Grand Union Close, a four-to-five storey mid-century housing development and Hathaway House, a new mixed-use development with a five storey block fronting Woodfield Road and 14-storey residential tower and five-storey office block fronting the canal. On the opposite side of the canal, the single-storey red brick and metal louvred facade of Westbourne Park bus garage is heavily graffitied, revealing a grittier side to this part of the city.
The small-scale urban fabric of the street, which rarely exceeds five storeys, juxtaposed against the large scale presence of the canal and the Westway, which almost forms a second horizon just 40 metres away at the southern corner of the site, informed AHMM’s decision to subdivide the building into seven distinct blocks.
Three smaller blocks face the streetfront, three are positioned behind and the higher density tower is positioned at the back, close to the canal where it is less visible to local residents.
The massing was also a strategic move aimed at repairing the urban fabric by restoring the continuity of the street edge, completing the line of urban blocks to the east and west of the site, and reinstating a coherent perimeter structure.
“The project has lots of neighbours who, through consultation, had concerns about the form of the building, and how that was going to impact on their daily life,” says Hazel Joseph, “We had to work quite hard on how to respond to issues with overlooking, noise and light pollution.”
Following consultation with residents and Westminster City Council, the height of the tower was reduced from the originally proposed 16 storeys to 12 storeys, it was also reshaped to reduce its mass and the position was moved away from the more sensitive residential properties.
In addition, setbacks at upper levels on the three street-facing blocks were introduced to protect daylight to properties directly opposite.
The westerly facade also “steps back and has very deep reveals with planted window boxes so that residents concerned about overlooking would have some sort of screening and veiling to minimise that issue,” says Joseph.
Vernacular response
The architectural fabric of the surrounding area reflects its 19th and early 20th century origins, featuring multiple variations of red and yellow London brick, along with a preponderance for industrial steelwork.
The material strategy for Westbourne Park was shaped by this palette with a strong focus on brick. Variation was introduced through detailing techniques, such as changing brick reveal depths and bonding patterns, spandrel treatments, and perforated metal screening, helping create a complex architectural language.
Along Woodfield Road, the facade are rhythmically ordered to reflect the finer urban grain with three different bricks specified to give each of the blocks a unique character. “It was about both creating a composition across the front and sitting comfortably into the historic context,” says Joseph.
Facade detailing on the canal-facing elevations is bolder and more vertically expressive. On the eastern boundary, facing Grand Union Close, it is softer with smaller, more deeply-recessed windows.
Faience glazed cladding is a common feature on London Underground stations, and in this area of West London an emerald green variety adorns various industrial buildings and public houses.
This was the jumping off point for AHMM’s decision to specify profiled green terracotta tiles on the pavilion block to give it a distinct architectural identity and help define its function as a civic space used for events and affordable workspace.
“The different materiality speaks to the internal functional programme, it also bounces the southern light around the scheme, creating a bit of variety within the complex of buildings,” says Joseph.
Large-format glazed openings on the pavilion maximise transparency and provide direct visual connections between the interior and the adjacent canalside public realm.
The colour green also finds expression in terracotta spandrel panels used selectively across the tower and the block to the west of the courtyard, creating more points of contrast and responding to the more industrial character of the courtyard and canal-side setting.
Other external treatments designed to emphasise the waterside context include a mirrored stainless steel soffit on the passage forming the start of the pedestrian route to the canal. As light changes throughout the day, the surface disperses natural light, enhancing visibility and animating the entrance zone.
“This textured, reflective material references the rippling water and provides a really nice moment in the project, bouncing light around a space that would otherwise feel quite compressed,” says Joseph.
Efforts to increase the connection with nature extended to tree planting, green roofs and the inclusion of permeable surfaces, helping boost the project’s biodiversity and water management credentials. The design pre-dates the 10% minimum Biodiversity Net Gain requirements introduced in 2024, but it nevertheless created a “significant uplift on the limited baseline” of a site covered by hard concrete surfaces, Joseph adds.
The landscape strategy, alongside efforts to design internal and external spaces and amenities sensitive to the needs of the local community elevate Westbourne Park to more than just another mixed-use destination. In creating a permeable, animated new edge to the canal, it supports not just social exchange, but a renewed connection to one of Britain’s most important historic waterways.