Prayer City, Kent.

Following over 3 years of making the building and site functional and operational, attention was now switched to address perhaps the most frequented place in an public building, the Reception area. The site and building originally belonged to The Scouts based in Chatham, and in fact, they still occupies the grounds surrounding KICC Headquarters’, called Prayer City. During the design and construction of the building and indeed the Reception area, they stamped their ideas onto it.

The original design, as seen in the picture to the left, posted a dominating timber framed, octagonal-shaped Reception desk with large oak columns and worktop, siting proud of a facing-brick plinth finish. Above the internal structure was a clay-tiled, lean-to-roof that spanned from the desk, at a shallow angle, to meet the adjacent fair-faced solid block wall.

The double-volume Reception area is afforded generous natural daylight through the aluminium framed curtain wall, finished in off-brown, powder-coated finished, housing two pairs of double doors.

The area is carpeted with exposed brick finish enclosing the space. The timber oak finish was also extended to the internal double doors flanking the Reception, giving access to spaces beyond.

In terms of the renovation, the initial approach was to strip-out the existing timber structure, leaving the brick-plinth carcass as a base for the new desk.

Upon stripping however, it was found that the structure and its condition of the remaining plinth was not fit to be retained. This also was stripped-out, leaving a blank canvas for a completely new structure, constructed from scratch. The solution was design an ultra-sleek desk with sweeping curved edge, floating glass finish with LED spotlights to the edge of the stepped u-shaped desk.

The final structure sits proud of the dominating marble effect, screen printed glazed feature wall, with its warm and inviting orange glow – even when the power to the back-lit structure is switched off. The exposed brick surround are plastered with accent colours added to the free-standing looking, panel-like walls, finished in Italian polish plaster. The oak double doors, partitions and window frames are replaced with frameless glass structure with polished polished aluminium bar handles giving a sleek, light ambiance and finished. The marble floor finish gives a grounded but sophisticated finish and presentation.