Amid Camden’s eclectic architectural fabric of Georgian terraces, industrial Victorian buildings and a Gothic Revival church, this mixed-use scheme transformed a disused brownfield site into a successful Sainsbury’s supermarket with supporting amenities.

The building's skeletal steel-framed structure accommodates a deep, open-plan shop floor that is bounded on two sides by cantilevered, double-height volumes containing ancillary accommodation. A shallow vault of curved trusses spans the entire retail floor, creating a column-free space for the optimal arrangement of shelving, refrigeration and cashiers.

As a counterweight to the trusses, tapered plate girders project from the inner edges of the shop outwards, beyond the perimeter walls. Expressed in bold steelwork, and each held down by four 50 mm tension rod ties, the robust girders are an appropriate detail for the urban setting.

At street-level the supermarket is set back from the pavement and enclosed by full-height glazing; the upper level is wrapped with elegant aluminium panelling and strip windows, revisiting Grimshaw’s noteworthy cladding system for the Herman Miller warehouse.