Lucent W1, Piccadilly Circus

Darwen Terracotta supplied bespoke handmade faience tiles for the new-build elements of Lucent W1, a landmark mixed-use development unifying 13 buildings behind Piccadilly Circus's iconic digital advertising screen into 144,000 sq ft of premium office, retail and residential space.

Our most striking contribution is the feature faience cladding at Rainbow Corner — the junction of Shaftesbury Avenue and Denman Street — and the Sherwood Street entrance elevation. The design intent was to create the impression of the slate roof plane gradually descending to street level. To achieve this, we produced three-dimensional, hand-formed faience tiles with an opalescent finish, engineered using parametric design to graduate in relief and colour across the elevation — flatter and restrained at street level, growing increasingly sculptural toward the roofline. The tiles were assembled into precast concrete panels by Thorpe Precast before installation.

The result is a façade of rare tactile quality, its grey-blue tones referencing the 19th-century ceramic traditions of the Piccadilly streetscape. Lucent W1 was completed in autumn 2023 and received the AJ Architecture Award 2024 for Mixed-Use Project.