On Regent Street, an adaptive reuse consolidates two adjoining addresses into a single retail and hospitality venue within a protected Neo-Baroque shell. The project turns the street-facing restraint required by heritage controls into an inward architectural exercise, organizing a calibrated sequence of rooms from a luminous women’s hall to a darker retail salon, anchored by a stone-and-brass stair to a performance-ready lower level. A disciplined palette of marbles, timber, brass, and custom mosaics structures the experience while maintaining continuity with the building’s historic fabric.
Kith London Flagship Technical Information
- Architects: Porto Architecture
- Location: 314 Regent Street, United Kingdom
- Completion Year: 2025
- Photographs: Courtesy of KITH
We treated the Nash-era frontage as a fixed datum and concentrated expression inside, using material and light to articulate a clear sequence of rooms while respecting the protected streetscape.
– Ben Porto
Urban Fabric and Heritage Stewardship
The project merges two historic Regent Street units into a single venue while retaining the rhythm of the urban frontage through separate retail and restaurant doors. This maintains the legibility of the street’s parcel structure and sustains pedestrian porosity at the corner with Little Portland Street. The strategy reads as an urban stitch rather than a graphic rebranding of the façade, aligning with the conservation framework that governs this John Nash-planned corridor and its 1920s Neo-Baroque rebuild.
Conservation priorities shape the entry sequence. The original interior vestibule, with curved glazing and century-old windowpanes, is preserved and used as a calibration element for new insertions. Rather than replicating historic motifs, the design allows the heritage fabric to set proportion, curvature, and transparency cues that are echoed in contemporary millwork and display assemblies inside. External interventions remain minimal, holding the façade as a steady datum so that architectural energy is redirected to spatial and material orchestration within.
Zoning, Sequencing, and Circulation
The ground floor is choreographed as a gradient of atmospheres that clarifies the program. Flanking zones for children’s retail and a street-facing treats bar form threshold spaces, each tuned with distinct material and chromatic registers. Beyond them, a lighter women’s area centers the plan, then compresses into a darker, more intimate retail hall to the right. This serial modulation, rather than signage, carries wayfinding and produces a legible hierarchy of uses.
Vertical circulation is anchored by a principal stair within the women’s zone, serving as a clear decision point. Formed in Calacatta Fantastico Arni with satin brass handrail and detailing, the stair reads as a continuous piece of stone furniture, drawing movement to the lower level without resorting to theatrical gestures. A dedicated entrance for the restaurant separates hospitality and retail operations while preserving coherence along the urban frontage, enabling parallel flows that do not conflict at peak hours.
Material Language and Atmosphere
Materials work as programmatic signifiers. The children’s area employs a lighter palette with a custom cloud ceiling structure and a fan mosaic underfoot, pairing Estremoz marble with satin brass accents to achieve a playful yet durable environment. The treats bar adopts bar-style seating, muted pastels, and a mosaic that links back to the children’s zone, with Rosa Portugalo, Azul Cielo, and Volakas marbles trimmed in stainless steel to evoke a compact service counter with clear hygienic readings.
The women’s area shifts to refined white oak millwork articulated with Crystal Tiffany and Estremoz marbles, a Pentelikon marble band, and oak herringbone flooring, producing a bright, even field of light and reflection that supports careful color rendition for apparel. The main retail hall contrasts this with walnut millwork, Belvedere marble wall linings, Calacatta Vagli stone tables, deep wood herringbone floors, and embossed leatherwork. Recessed lighting, nested in plaster-moulded ceilings, tempers the perceived height and introduces a quieter acoustic envelope. At the same time, diamond-tufted green velvet elements provide localized tactility that slows circulation near key displays.
A recurrent taxonomy of stones threads the entire project. Estremoz, Pentelikon, Belvedere, and Calacatta variants are deployed in bands, inlays, and furniture, with brass detailing and custom fan mosaics acting as connective tissue across zones. This repetition produces continuity, yet slight shifts in finish and figure mark thresholds, creating a clear spatial syntax without overt partitions.
Below-Grade Program and Performance Infrastructure
The lower level consolidates footwear and expanded apparel within a dark wood envelope that continues the upstairs language at a deeper tone. Belvedere marble forms cases and benches, while a Calacatta Fantastico Arni band traces the perimeter of dark stained oak flooring. Brass parquet inlay and embossed velvet wall panels introduce warmth and absorbency, balancing visual richness with an acoustic dampening effect that encourages dwell time and conversation at seating clusters.
Performance and event use are embedded in the fit-out rather than appended. A stone table conceals a retractable bay for DJ and presentation equipment, and a high-fidelity audio system is integrated into the architecture, with cable paths, isolation, and ventilation handled within casework. The system’s presence is legible but not dominant, allowing the room to shift from daily retail to activation without reconfiguration fatigue.
Consistency of detailing treats fixtures as primary architectural elements. Stone banding carries wayfinding, casework calibrates sightlines and circulation loops, and upholstered panels tune reverberation when the room is energized. The result is a below-grade floor that performs as a spatial instrument, aligning technical requirements with the project’s material narrative.
About Porto Architecture
Porto Architecture is a New York City-based architectural studio founded by Ben Porto. Known for its refined spatial sequencing, disciplined material palettes, and adaptive reuse strategies, the firm’s approach emphasizes historical sensitivity combined with contemporary expression. Porto Architecture’s work often engages landmark structures, integrating new functions into heritage contexts with clarity and restraint.
Credits and Additional Notes
- Architects: Porto Architecture, Ben Porto
- Client: Kith
