The Whiteley

The Whiteley — IADA 2026 award

The Whiteley received Platinum Winner recognition at the International Architecture & Design Awards 2026 in Renovation, Restoration & Adaptive Reuse. Project status, design team and credits are listed alongside the presentation.

About the project

The regeneration of Whiteleys represents a truly unique opportunity to transform an entire neighbourhood in the heart of London. An important landmark building located in Bayswater, on Queensway, the new retrofit development seeks to bring much needed improvements to the neighbourhood and its residents, as well as contribute to the unique vitality and diversity of the area as a whole.

The Grade II listed retail building was originally designed by John Belcher and John James Joass as a department store for the visionary William Whiteley, with the first phase completed in 1911. Following the death of Belcher, the second phase of building was carried out by William Curtis Green in 1925. Subsequently, decades of incremental repairs and changes further marred the clarity of the early 20th Century original. The design restores and builds on the logic and intent of Belcher and Joass’ scheme by creating a diverse retail and leisure experience that faces out toward the street, animating and activating the public realm to create a new destination. It also optimises the massing and programme of the new building, introducing residential apartments on the upper floors and a new public courtyard on the ground that draws natural light and people into the building. Respecting the historic fabric, the scheme restores the Queensway façade to its former glory, with a new retail arcade, glazing infills on the upper floors to match the original, the restored dome and clocktower above the central entrance, as well as a remodelled cupola on the northern corner that balances the composition of the entire façade.

Different heritage approaches have been applied to different parts of the existing building. The historic façade has been preserved, while the balustrades, which no longer met current regulations, were creatively re‑designed and fabricated from the original metalwork. The windows closely match the original aesthetic and reuse elements of the original frames, while responding to today’s performance requirements, and the original window paint colour—discovered beneath layers added over the past century—has been reinstated. The heritage staircase and entrance screen have been conserved and relocated within the building, and a commitment to the site’s history led to the addition of the northern cupola which was part of William Whiteley’s original vision for the building but had not been realised.

A vibrant mixed-use development, the new design incorporates a wide range of functions – retail, restaurants, leisure, hotel and residential – to ensure that the building responds to the needs of residents and visitors alike. The creation of a significant new public courtyard that not only adds considerable area of public realm but also acts to underpin The Whiteley as the heart of the local neighbourhood.

The project targets a BREEAM rating of ‘Excellent’, demonstrating its exemplary standards of sustainable and inclusive urban design.

Foster + Partners

Foster + Partners is a global studio for architecture, urbanism and design, rooted in sustainability, which was founded over fifty years ago in 1967 by Norman Foster. Since then, he and the team around him have established an international practice with a worldwide reputation for thoughtful and pioneering design, working as a single studio that is both ethnically and culturally diverse. The studio integrates the skills of architecture with engineering, both structural and environmental, urbanism, interior and industrial design, model and film making, aeronautics and many more – our collegiate working environment is similar to a compact university. These diverse skills make us capable of tackling a wide range of projects, particularly those of considerable complexity and scale. Design is at the core of everything that we do. We design buildings, spaces and cities; we listen, we question, and we innovate.