Duke of York Square

The retail court and public space within Chelsea's Duke of York Square offers an inviting retreat from the King's Road. Designed by Paul Davis & Partners and Elizabeth Banks Associates.

The Duke of York’s site comprises a 4.5 hectare former military campus near Sloane Square in Chelsea. Following a strategic review by the MOD, The Cadogan Estate purchased the site in 1998 in initiated a £120m mixed use redevelopment. Phase 1 of the overall scheme has opened up a site inaccessible to the public for 200 years and created a new retail quarter centered around the first new public square in the West End for over a century. Paul Davis and Partners, the architects responsible for masterplanning and implementing the scheme, have retained a significant number of existing buildings while sensitively integrating new buildings to create a series of linked spaces which respond to the existing urban grain.

Elizabeth Banks Associates, the landscape architects, have used high quality natural stone materials, clusters of fountain jets, lighting and limited tree and shrub planting to provide spatial definition and create an ordered, visually coherent public realm which entices people off the King's Road. The main square functions as a haven from the frenetic activity along the King's Road but also has the potential to be the focus of events, for instance acting as an arrival space for London Fashion Week.