“Can we now say that OMA has grown up?” – Hugh Pearman

Dezeen Wire: architecture critic Hugh Pearman has expressed admiration for the mature and understated nature of Dutch practice OMA‘s design for a new headquarters for merchant bank Rothschild on a sensitive site near the Bank of England – Hugh Pearman

Pearman suggests that it is “a miracle that a ‘foreign’ firm of architects with a reputation for the outrageous won the 2005 competition to redevelop the site,” but describes their approach to this project as “well-mannered, corporate, svelte, positively self-effacing.”

The area’s history demanded a low-key approach and Pearman adds that, although he wishes the building “wasn’t on quite such good behaviour,” its response to the brief “makes the right urbanistic moves and is enlivened by some flashes of wit.”

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