The Whiteley

Building study: Building magazine & Building Design, July 2026

When William Whiteley set up shop in Westbourne Grove in the late 19^th century, the street was nicknamed ‘bankruptcy avenue’ for its rate of failed businesses. Today, beneath the polished façade of his former Queensway department store runs a new parade of shops, a coffee house, gym and cinema, along with eight floors of residences and a hotel. More than a century on, the changing fortunes of Bayswater’s commercial enterprises continue to define the character of its streets. 

Senior Partner and Head of Studio at Foster + Partners, Patrick Campbell remembers the team’s initial conversation with Marcus Meijer, CEO of MARK, who acquired The Whiteley in 2013. “We have bought a shopping precinct. Would you be interested in taking part in the competition?” The two had met a few years earlier through the Yacht Club de Monaco, a liner-like structure of nautical white terraces around an exclusive club and a sailing school, which Meijer admired. At the time, Campbell lived just around the corner from The Whiteley and knew the building well.

Foster + Partners’ response to a brief rarely restricts itself in scope. Just as the pedestrianisation of Trafalgar Square drew on traffic analysis as far away as the South Circular, Campbell’s local insight helped to shape a typically far-reaching plan for The Whiteley that also took in Queensway. “We realised early on the most fundamental part of it: you can’t fix the building without fixing the street.”

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Read the full piece, Building Design: https://www.bdonline.co.uk/buildings/the-whiteley-fosters-transforms-a-piece-of-bayswater-history/5143042.article

Building: https://www.building.co.uk/focus/the-whiteley-fosters-transforms-a-piece-of-bayswater-history/5143069.article