Marble Arch Place

This is an impressive mixed-use scheme that will deliver a new landmark building for London and a striking gateway to the West End. The seven-storey building will provide over 95,000 sq ft of commercial space, and the 18-storey tower will be purely residential. It will deliver the highest quality specification for residential and commercial buildings in London, with the apartments and offices benefiting from wonderful views of Hyde Park and the West End, and several floors featuring large terraces.

The expansive site basement will comprise 4,000m2 of basement space across five-storeys, and is being constructed top-down by our team at a depth of 20m. A traditional top-down excavation method was used, with telescopic, vertical-reach excavators working via mole holes in the high-level slab to remove the spoil.

Smaller machines and dumpers were used on the lower levels to bring the spoil to the bottom of the mole hole for subsequent removal. The mole hole positions were selected to give maximum flexibility to the excavation operations and to fit in with the general site logistics.

As the Central Line underground tunnels runs so close to the site, and the eventual cinema, certain precautions had to be taken to ensure that the noise and vibrations will not impact residents in the finished buildings. Careys developed the innovative solution of installing bearings into the slipform core - an engineering feat that has never been done before by any contractor in the UK.

Our specialist teams also constructed the concrete cores of the development’s two towers, which soar to seven and 18 storeys respectively, offering spectacular views of Hyde Park and the West End. We used a slipform methodology to erect the cores – a process which went extremely smoothly and rapidly. For example, using this slipform method, we built the taller of the two cores to a height of 77m in just 16 weeks.

Similarly, we raised the second of the cores to a height of 33m, in just five weeks. In fact, when constructing the two concrete cores – we were able to achieve an average of 1.2 metres per day – with our maximum single-day productivity reaching 1.8 metres. We managed to accomplish this feat despite having to adhere to strict working hours that had been imposed due to the close proximity of neighbouring residential properties.