Cadogan Café

The design for a new café to be built in Duke of York Square was highly commended at The Architects’ Journal’s prestigious Architecture of Tomorrow Awards.

The state-of-the-art Cadogan Café was designed by London-based practice Nex Architecture, who beat 147 competitors in an international design competition in 2012 to design a new restaurant building in Grade II-listed Duke of York Square.

The café, with room for more than 100 diners, will include the UK’s first innovative glass façade, which will lower into a single-storey basement during fine weather, and a circular roof terrace open to the public as an additional green space to relax.

The judges, including Will Hurst, managing editor of The Architects’ Journal, and Louise Wyman, head of Garden Villages, Towns and Cities at the Homes and Communities Agency, said the design had achieved just the right architectural balance in its historical surrounds: ‘It’s elegant and well-mannered, but also modern.’