Curtain Road

Designed by Anomaly Architects and delivered by main contractor Red Construction and brickwork contractor Titan Brickwork, the building previously housed furniture and clothing manufacturing before being refurbished into high-quality office workspace.

Titan Brickwork approached IG Masonry Support directly to design and supply six bespoke Brick Slip Arches for the project. Recognising the technical complexity of working within an existing historic building, Titan drew on our expertise in prefabricated brick slip system design from the outset.

One of the primary challenges was that each arch opening varied in width between its front and back face, requiring precise setting out to ensure the brickwork appeared uniform and consistently bonded across the curved opening.

A further challenge was that the arches had to be slender at their mid-section to fit around pre-existing concrete beams, leaving very limited space while still meeting the required structural performance. Each arch also had to accommodate two different opening widths simultaneously.

IG Masonry Support carefully set out the brickwork so that courses aligned correctly across both faces of the arch despite the dimensional differences. This required precise brick cutting at our in-house brick cutting facility and a considered bonding approach to disguise the discrepancy without compromising the visual result.

Titan Brickwork produced physical templates and accurate site measurements of the opening widths and the angles at which they sat, which allowed our team to coordinate the design precisely with the actual onsite conditions, ensuring alignment from front to back face whilst maintaining a consistent appearance across the full width of the opening on both sides.

To address the limited space at the mid-section, due to pre-existing beams, the design team increased the structural robustness of the elements in that area by adding gussets at a closer frequency to ensure the arch maintained its structural integrity.

By working closely with Red Construction and Titan Brickwork, IG Masonry Support delivered bespoke, prefabricated solutions that overcame the complications inherent in working within an existing historic building – combining precise engineering with practical, onsite collaboration to achieve Anomaly Architects’ original design intent in full.