Antarctic architect completes job in the City

Staircase for Close Brothers

• Increase image
• View all images

For Hugh Broughton Architects, a firm more used to dealing with the logistics of icy wastes, completing a project in the City of London poses different challenges.

Hugh Broughton, whose practice has just completed the refurbishment of an office for the corporate finance division of City bank Close Brothers, told the AJ: 'In the Antarctic, you haven't got anybody to piss off in the process.'

The main feature of the City refurbishment, in a building originally designed by MacCormac Jamieson Pritchard in 1998, was the cutting of a 4.5m-diameter hole to create a spiral staircase linking two floors.

'It allows people to mingle much better,' said Broughton.