News
20 May 2009
Pick Everard to design one of the first BREEAM-rated London car showrooms for Honda UK
Honda UK has appointed Pick Everard as architect for its new Colindale showroom, on the Edgware Road in North London. Given the dramatic downturn in consumer spending over the past few months, this latest move demonstrates Honda UK’s commitment to its network development programme in key retail locations.
Using an existing site and currently unoccupied building adjacent to a Sainsbury’s store, the new Colindale showroom will have 683m² for displaying cars. Existing offices are to be demolished and replaced with a new, double-height car showroom. Existing warehouse and workshop buildings will be kept and refurbished for vehicle workshop, office and ancillary areas and outside, there will be more car parking spaces for customers, with ‘green’ planted screens between the different parking areas to provide an attractive backdrop to the vehicles.
Planning permission was obtained in February by Honda UK’s team, which included Pick Everard as project architect. Construction work is likely to start in summer 2009, with completion expected at the beginning of 2010.
Designed to achieve a ‘very good’ or ‘excellent’ Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM) rating, this would be one of the first Honda retail showrooms in the UK to achieve this BREEAM standard. Pick Everard’s design team has risen to the challenge by introducing ground source heat pumps, rainwater harvesting, waste water recycling and under floor heating, among other measures, to work towards achieving the BREEAM rating.
Paul Rothera at Pick Everard comments, “We have worked with Honda UK on several showrooms in the UK and are delighted to be working on designs for the Colindale site. Our role as architect is to design a more sustainable car showroom, using our considerable expertise in both sustainable building design and in redeveloping brownfield sites.”
