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Award winning architectural practice founded by Catherine du Toit and Peter Thomas

tel +44 (0)8456 123 991 | email info@51pct.com

• 51% projects

  • Cut + Run New York
  • Mumsnet Towers
  • Trinity Experimental Station
  • Drawing on the City
  • Whitechapel Art Gallery
  • Vicco’s Tower
  • Fairgrounds, Mineral County
  • Dover
  • Baumhaus
  • The Green House
  • Bridging the Playground
  • Social Cinema
  • Enthusiasm
  • 51’s

• categories

  • Architecture
  • Art
  • Landscape

Cut + Run New York

Cut + Run has opened a new sus­tain­able edit facil­ity at 599 Broad­way in NYC in a build­ing we first admired back in 1985  .  .  .  51% stu­dios’ radi­ant inte­rior for the award win­ning edi­tors of An Incon­ve­nient Truth mixes nat­ural light with reclaimed mate­ri­als to cre­ate an invit­ing and earth friendly edit­ing experience.

Recy­cle and reduce: The facil­ity embraces green build­ing strate­gies, pay­ing spe­cial atten­tion to pro­mot­ing the use of nat­ural light. A fam­ily of seven suites is crafted from recy­cled, light­weight and translu­cent mate­ri­als with a mono­lithic resin floor to reflect and amplify the nat­ural light.  No dry wall and lit­tle glass is used, and suites made from formaldehyde-free, post-industrial recy­cled wood fibre­board are sound­proofed with recy­cled jeans.

Suite inte­ri­ors are indi­vid­u­ally dec­o­rated and fur­nished, with one wall left pre­dom­i­nantly raw and fin­ished in a nat­ural soy based clear sealant. Split bat­tens enable the con­stant tech­ni­cal upgrade and main­te­nance whilst keep­ing cables dis­creet. Com­puter aided con­struc­tion by Show­man Fab­ri­ca­tors allowed a rapid fit out on site, and pro­duced beau­ti­fully clean interiors.

The com­bi­na­tion of translu­cent poly­car­bon­ate walls, top lit with dim­ma­ble low energy diodes and a mocha coloured resin floor give the over­all effect of a calm radi­ance. Five offline suites, a graph­ics suite and a new HD fin­ish­ing suite are the cre­ative heart of the space. All rooms have been the lat­est ver­sions of Avid and Final Cut and are SD/HD compatible.

Mumsnet Towers

51% stu­dios would like to wish Mum­snet a very happy 1oth birth­day.  It’s been won­der­ful work­ing with you, and amaz­ing to con­sider the action your new shed meet­ing room has seen over the last year alone ! Con­grat­u­la­tions and all the best for the next 10 years!

Shed Mod­ernism: Bis­cuit­gate hap­pened here …

When Jus­tine Roberts approached us to design a meet­ing room for Mum­snet Tow­ers, the para­me­ters were sim­ple: it had to pro­vide pri­vacy and yet allow nat­ural light through it and it had to be good value for money. Oh, and it also needed to be light­weight, demount­able and sustainable.

51% stu­dios chose poly­car­bon­ate pan­els over glass to pro­vide acoustic insu­la­tion, fil­ter the light and give pri­vacy whilst still being light and easy to trans­port and han­dle. Pan­els were cut to size on site and can be recy­cled after use.

The fram­ing is from sus­tain­able British grown cedar, adapted from a rain­screen pro­file we have been using in Dun­ge­ness, set back-to-back to pro­vide stiff­ness whilst sup­port­ing the pan­els with­out any fix­ings. Cedar is also light­weight, and weath­ers to a soft sil­ver over time. We achieved the clean floor to ceil­ing fin­ish with the help of Tripledot’s fine car­pen­ters who scribed the cedar to the undu­lat­ing planes of the exist­ing ware­house shell.

We love the clever com­po­nents Item Prod­ucts makes for pack­ag­ing and have used on the their heav­ier duty han­dles for the slid­ing door. We exposed the self fin­ished poly­car­bon­ate edge so no frame was needed on the lead­ing edge of the slid­ing door, allow­ing it to slot effort­lessly into the same cedar detail as the other panels.

For pho­tos and videos of Mum­snet 10^th Anniver­sary Party at Google HQ, do have a look at these links on Flickr or Mum­snet

Trinity Experimental Station

In col­lab­o­ra­tion with our friends at John­son Nay­lor, we have just let the ten­der for three envi­ron­men­tally con­scious stu­dio build­ings on the site of the for­mer Trin­ity Exper­i­men­tal Sta­tion in Dun­ge­ness.  Nuclear power / Air­source Heat­pump.  Locally grown cedar / Matt black con­crete.  Shin­gle roof / Ther­mal Mass.  Float­ing slab / Exist­ing foot­print. Care­fully framed views / Low u values.

Whitechapel Art Gallery

We were briefed to mod­ern­ize the Whitechapel’s back of house, car­ry­ing new iden­tity into these spaces in fresh and play­ful ways. The desire for soft, organic mate­ri­als and low embod­ied energy led to the sourc­ing of a reclaimed gym­na­sium floor, re-laid through­out with the orig­i­nal sports mark­ings left intact.

The kitchen allows infor­mal lunches as well as more for­mal staff meet­ings and pre­sen­ta­tions, with ‘ideas shelves’ for impro­vi­sory mini exhi­bi­tions, with pin boards and new lock­ers for vis­it­ing exhi­bi­tion staff.

The director’s office is recon­fig­ured to allow extra space for meet­ings. Large trans­par­ent slid­ing screens replace exist­ing painted tim­ber doors to opti­mise nat­ural day light­ing in all offices, simul­ta­ne­ously enhanc­ing the sense of com­mu­nity between team members.

Orig­i­nal desk­ing is kept, and resur­faced, over­head cab­i­nets are re-used for stor­age and work­sta­tions per­son­alised with indi­vid­ual roll out libraries.

Roof spaces will be insu­lated with locally sourced mate­ri­als and relined to pro­vide addi­tional stor­age which will improve both energy effi­ciency and com­fort levels.

Vicco’s Tower

Con­cep­tu­ally this project frames nature in the city. It is a light­weight tim­ber tower on an asym­met­ric steel stiletto.

Vicco’s Tower frames spe­cific views and cre­ates par­tic­u­lar qual­i­ties of light in each space. From the study, a ‘panorama’ win­dow frames the gar­den as a land­scape. A dou­ble height ver­ti­cal glass slot shows a Lon­don Plane — one of the orig­i­nal avenue planted by the Geor­gians. A hor­i­zon­tal slot at bath height allows a very pri­vate con­tem­pla­tion of the gar­den. And above the sky.

51% stu­dios’ artist client AK Dol­ven says: “To be able to bathe in the moon­light and a shower under a tree is some­thing I thought was only pos­si­ble in the remote place I come from in Nor­way. With this inside-outside space I can con­tinue these ele­men­tal expe­ri­ences in East Lon­don.” . In a dense urban envi­ron­ment, nature gains in focus and beauty: archi­tec­ture as lens.

Mate­ri­als have been designed to wear well and age grace­fully, with min­i­mal fin­ish­ing or prod­uct appli­ca­tions. Money was spent to ensure ade­quate glass insu­la­tion and a full house water purifi­ca­tion sys­tem from the pure H2O com­pany to sup­port our clients health and negate the need for adding to the recy­cling pile with bot­tled water.

Vicco’s Tower won an RIBA Lon­don Award in 2008 and has been short­listed for the Geor­gian Group Archi­tec­tural Award and a Grand Designs Award. RIBA Awards are given for build­ings that have high archi­tec­tural stan­dards and make a sub­stan­tial con­tri­bu­tion to the local environment. 

“Vicco’s tower is a rear gar­den exten­sion of a tra­di­tional small Hack­ney house to give a new stacked kitchen, study and mas­ter bath­room in that order for a Nor­we­gian artist liv­ing in Lon­don. You can­not help being mes­mer­ized by the artist’s own touches so a mod­est project becomes one of sin­gu­lar aes­thetic consistency.

The exten­sion addresses the back gar­den with an area of nearly 100% glaz­ing in the lower ground kitchen such that it feels almost like one was cook­ing out of doors. Above this is sus­pended a two storey solid wood tower con­tain­ing the more pri­vate study, entirely lined with birch ply­wood fol­lowed by a large bath­room which has an entire glass roof and bril­liant light. 

Alto­gether a very suc­cess­ful build­ing from mod­est but sure means.” RIBA web­site

To see AK Dol­vens work, please visit: www.akdolven.com Pho­tog­ra­pher Vegar Moen is at www.vegarmoen.com

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