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Ethos of the scheme and continuing works i.e. plans for a bar/ restaurant and other retail outlets
Why lofts?
In London , the loft boom owed much to someone who was the furthest thing from cool - Margaret Thatcher. Her government passed the Use Class Order 198 which meant that industrial and office property were classified as one, giving landlords the opportunity to charge office rents on inner city workshop and light industrial units.
The area of Clerkenwell, long the home of the printing industry and small jewellery workshops, was dramatically affected as tenants were forced to move rather than pay exorbitant rents and this trend paved the way for large scale office developments.
However, Black Monday followed by a recession put paid to many developers' dreams and the area became littered with vacant Victorian industrial buildings which could not attract back the traditional manufacturing businesses who had modernised their operations.
Much in the same way as New York 's Soho had become illegitimately occupied, artists took up residence as landlords turned a blind eye. In a bid to stimulate regeneration Islington council promoted the use of these properties as residential and developers then moved in.
One of the first buildings to be converted was a magnificent Art Deco building in Summer Street, which was bought from liquidators at a bargain price by The Manhattan Loft Corporation . The rest, as they say, is history.
How has the market developed?
Summer Lofts attracted a great deal of media attention and it didn't take long for the supply of buildings to evaporate as developers unsympathetic to the ideals of the genuine loft bartered at high prices for a piece of the action.
The result was space became sold as much smaller, crudely named, "loft style" apartments. In order to distance itself from the inferior product Urban Spaces stayed one step ahead of the media (who constantly asked them where the next trendy area was) and escorted their clientele further east to Spitalfields, and Hackney.
Rather than join the estate agents jumping on the bandwagon desperate to deal with anything just because it had a trendy postal code, Urban Spaces kept faith with their integrity and principals of architecture consequently allowing their reputation to grow as the leading experts in loft space within the city fringes.
How would you define an authentic loft?
Converted from a former factory or industrial building, authentic loft apartments are light, raw, and spacious.
They're framed by the original industrial structure and typically feature exposed brick walls, timbers and metal girders, cast iron or concrete columns, concrete floors and ceilings, large industrial windows, double height ceilings. They often retain original details such as industrial lifts, radiators, window frames, loading doors with hoist arms and platforms - basically, evidence of its former, non-residential, life.
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