Joel Mann
Duke of York Square
This was a pleasant, well-integrated piece of retail infill just off the King's Road in Chelsea. The building on the right in this photo, housing a franchise of the Patisserie Valerie chain, appears to be the original Edwardian example on which the rest of the plaza is based in terms of scale and (less strictly) style. Clearly it was always intended to be the upper end of mid-scale (I use 'upscale' very carefully when describing London retail, as I'm sure I haven't seen anything near as upscale as it gets), but nonetheless it is encouraging to see (even if it is in a city that's pretty uniformly scaled throughout, it makes a young Eurocentric American wistful for the idea of something better than the lifestyle centers we seem to praise here).
Duke of York Square
This was a pleasant, well-integrated piece of retail infill just off the King's Road in Chelsea. The building on the right in this photo, housing a franchise of the Patisserie Valerie chain, appears to be the original Edwardian example on which the rest of the plaza is based in terms of scale and (less strictly) style. Clearly it was always intended to be the upper end of mid-scale (I use 'upscale' very carefully when describing London retail, as I'm sure I haven't seen anything near as upscale as it gets), but nonetheless it is encouraging to see (even if it is in a city that's pretty uniformly scaled throughout, it makes a young Eurocentric American wistful for the idea of something better than the lifestyle centers we seem to praise here).