Belgravia in the 18^th century is not the illustrious and beautiful area it is now. It was a swampy wasteland known as the five fields. It a perilous passage for citizens because of robbers.

But in the 1820s, Richard Grosvenor, 1^st  Marquess of Westminster with the help of master builder Thomas Cubitt (who Queen Victoria commented “clever little Mr Cubitt”) and developer Seth Smith, developed Five Fields with grand white stucco terraces, mansions and warehouses centred on garden squares. Which today is called Belgravia named after the village of Belgrave, in Cheshire.

Designed by Joseph Jobling and constructed in 1834, The Pantechnicon, a former furniture warehouse for Belgravian residents which was destroyed in 1874 by a fire, takes on the Greek Revival Style façade which is based on the 5^th century Greek Temples. It is characterised by its symmetrical façade, rhythmical rows of fluted doric columns without plinth but with capital and abacus at the very top.

Above the abacus sits the entablature made up of a frieze (with alternating triglyphs and metopes) which is a skeumorph ( a derivate object that retains ornamental design cues for the familiar) of wooden Greek Temples.

The ideals represented are of a learned, democratic state that recalls the Athenian oath “I shall leave the city not less but more beautiful than I found it”

Pedestrianised Motcomb Street is lined with independent boutiques and buzzy restaurants with the only Café Kitsune in The UK, here! Having first appeared in 1830s; it is flanked by houses in the Georgian style with cobbled roads and hidden courtyards.

The Carlton Tower Jumeirah is a luxury hotel in London. Owned and managed by the Emirati firm Jumeirah, it is located on Cadogan Place next to Sloane Street. There are three restaurants and bars, which include The Rib Room Bar & Restaurant, and Chinoiserie.

The then-tallest building in London opened in 1961. Following a renovation in September 2019, this modernist building now boasts an exquisite foyer and reception, 186 new bedrooms and suites, a new health club and spa, restaurant, lobby bar and lounge, ballroom and meeting rooms.

The modernist exterior has been preserved through clean geometric forms while guests can access Cadogan Gardens. The Porte-cochère made up of stone, Portland stone and golden lighting can only be described as glamourous.

The double height lobby includes Calacatta Lincoln decorative marbling, and Lasvit fluted chandelier the echoes Cadogan Garden’s chrysanthemum blossoms.

Sloane Street takes its name from Sir Hans Sloane, who purchased the surrounding area in 1712. Many of the properties in the street still belong to his descendants, the Earls Cadogan, via their company Cadogan Estates. Cadogan Estate, the prime landowner in Chelsea. Sloane Street has long been a fashionable shopping street stretches a kilometre south from Harvey Nichols at the Knightsbridge end past Gucci, Fendi, Dior, Jimmy Choo, Armani, Louis Vuitton, Prada, Versace, Hermes, Bulgari, Yves Saint Laurent, Valentino, Chanel and Dolce & Gabbana

What is striking is the Danish Embassy (shared with Embassy of Iceland) designed by Arne Jacobsen completed in 1977. It is an example of architectural functionalism : buildings should be built based solely on purpose and function. An obvious problem was to fit in a fairly large building (approx. 6500 m2) into the relatively small scale of the neighbouring buildings.

What used to be the Sheraton hotel built in the 1970s, then Belgraves Hotel and now The Hari Hotel is a display to 2 very different architectural expressions with the same philosophy. The superstructure above the lobby is remininscent of metabolic architecture, a post-war Japanese movement and  recalls The Nakagin Capsule Tower in Tokyo which is a take on small apartment units (capsules) attached to a central building core. The idea is that architecture behaves as a pre-made pod that can be attached to an infrastructure which supports organic growth. Architecture of the 1970s is characterised by experimentation in geometric design hence the extreme cubic and rectinilinear forms, post-modernism, brutalism with its bare concrete aesthetic, pop art and early deconstructivism. This is a continuation of styles perpetuated by architects Frank Lloyd Wright and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

The 4.5 acre Eaton Square Victorian garden named after Eaton Hall, the home of the Dukes of Westminster in Cheshire. Designed by master builder Thomas Cubitt, William Howard Seth Smith and Charles James Freake, the townhouses around were built between 1827 and 1855 and retain their original dimensions.

Its origins can be traced back to an Act of Parliament, which was passed in 1826 allowing Lord Grosvenor – who owned most of the land that now makes up Belgravia and Mayfair – to drain the “open and rural space known as the Five Fields and build a new and elegant town connecting London and Chelsea. Eaton Square’s location made it the perfect stopping off point on route to the King’s Road, then used as a private road by royalty heading for Kew or Hampton Court.

Architecturally, it features an oblong shape arranged around six private garden squares. Each garden has its own character and purpose, including an all-weather tennis court and two reserved for dog walking.

Ebury Street is a street in Belgravia, City of Westminster, London. It runs from a Grosvenor Gardens junction south-westwards to Pimlico Road. It was built mostly in the period 1815 to 1860.

The surviving houses 180–188 were called “Five Fields Row” when Mozart stayed there for a brief time in 1764. Cundy St flats on the south-east side are interesting 1950s mid-rise apartments set back from the road, mainly replacing sections damaged by bombing in the London Blitz. 22b Ebury Street was built in 1830 as a Baptist church. It was divided into flats in the 20th century.

What is still standing and interesting and a contrast to Belgravia’s classically inspired architecture is Cundy Street Flats. Built on a World War 2 bomb site in the early 1950s by architect Thomas Bennett. That was a period of austerity and rationing in response.

Eccleston Yards is an open-air mall in Belgravia, London, that is located between Eccleston Place, Eccleston Street, Ebury Street and Elizabeth Street. It is approximately a 7-minute walk from London Victoria Station. Eccleston Yards is owned by the Grosvenor Group and managed by Grosvenor Britain & Ireland. It consists of 19 units which include shops, businesses, restaurants and fitness studios

With its exposed brick and steel structures, this little enclave centered around a courtyard, was previously the location of Eccleston Place Power Station, owned by Westminster Electric Supply Corporation Ltd.  That supplied electricity to the Mayfair & Belgravia area for the first time in 1891. It recalls its industrial aesthetic by being “honest”and “true” to its materials. Our colleagues PDP architecture are located here.

Eaton Square Townhouses

The centre piece of Belgravia, Belgrave Square, covers 2 hectares. Laid out by Thomas Cubitt in 1825, it was completed in 1840. The square is flanked by 4 terraces grand stucco houses. 3 corners have beautiful detached mansions. The terraces were designed by George Basevi with mansions designed by Philip Hardwick and Robert Smirke.

The square contains statues of Christopher columbus (Italian explorer and navigator), simon bolivar (Venezuelan statesman who played a central role in south American independence.)

Onto the actual garden: Memorial sculptures are positioned in the gardens mainly level site with a raised middle area. There are 4 entrances, one on each side of the square leading from a perimeter gravel path, through a series of serpentine paths. Evergreen shrubbery screen the garden from surrounding roads creating privacy and seclusion.

James Lane, second and last Viscount Lanesborough, built Lanesborough House in 1719, which the original function was St Georges Hospital, an inscription on the architrave can still be seen. Due to disrepair William wilkins redesigned it in 1825 an employed classical Greek Revival Style during the Regency period (1811-1820).

Regency architecture is the late phase of Georgian architecture during the reign of King George fourth, Prince Regent. During this time crescents in Belgravia were popularised. The UK during this time was involved in the Napoleonic wars so there was a shortage of materials and high taxes therefore reduced construction.

This form of regency style architecture is distinguished by late Georgian treatment of classical revival architecture in its simple symmetrical proportions.

The Wellesley 1920s townhouse is restored in art deco style with the hotel named after Sir Arthur Wellesley, the first Duke of Wellington. The building began as The Hyde Park Corner underground station by Lesley Green and was also the former home of iconic jazz and cabaret venue pizza on the park. It reopened as a luxury hotel in December 2012.

Its architectural features that celebrate the wealth of the 1920s industrial age include an oxblood red tiled façade, closer to our time in 2011, an extravagant entrance façade was commissioned by The Wellesley to Lee Simmons, the visionary artist and designer, to create a new and bespoke sculptural screen.

A mansard roof is added to the building to provide more attic space which can be used as an extra room.

The Berkeley Hotel was completed in 1972 and currently has 214 bedrooms and associated guest facilities including two restaurants and a leisure and spa facility, which are open to both hotel guests and members of the public.

It is comprised of a more traditional façade, with the retained concrete frame re-clad in stone to match that of the original hotel building fronting Wilton Place. A distinctive element is the suspended structure at roof level, eight angled steel members supporting vertical steel rods, because it is close to the Piccadilly line.

For the porte-cochère, a glass canopy is stretched out over 16 nine-metre-long carbon fibre beams that form a geometrical pattern that provides structural strength imbued with visual lightness. The structure rests on an forest of timber masts and stainless steel columns driven into the stone base. Flanking each end is a full-length glass pavilion, both forming the new extensions to The Blue Bar and The Collins Room.