LONDON LOVES: The Façade @ The Duck & Rice

If you have ever found yourself wondering around Soho, you might have stumbled across a noticeably different building called The Duck + Rice. By day, Soho’s Berwick Street is typically lined with tasty street-food vendors and rowdy greengrocers. But it really did used to feel a little ‘dark and ghostly’ down the Picadilly end come nightfall, when all the office workers and cafe-goers had gone home. That was, until The Duck and Rice - and its particularly beautiful fasçade - opened its doors in 2014. Even Jay Rayner agrees. Yes, really.

Jay Rayner, for the Guardian says :” It was once a building of such extreme ugliness even its architect couldn’t have loved it. The conversion really is that good. The heavy front walls, in bricks the colour of polluted mud, have been replaced by sails of leaded windows, with geometric patterns picked out from the oddly shaped panes. . . . This stretch of London’s Berwick Street has never been one of Soho’s loveliest. Now it boasts a jewel.” We couldn’t agree more. But we also just love Jay Rayner.

The glass façade and exterior is the work of owner and restauranteur Alan Yau’s conceptual team - Istanbul based studio Autoban. They incorporated abstract geometric patterns and a mix of opaque and transparent glass to create a modern stained glass effect.

The concept was executed by local architects and interior designers - Archer Humphryes Architects. They stripped the 1960s “Endurance” pub right back to its concrete frame, completely rebuilding the architecture with black handmade brickwork and an extraordinary new window system. The abstract trapezoidal pattern is created with random screens of milk glass set within a large bronze anodized Anolok frame.

The fasçade brings a subtle brightness to this former dreary end of Berwick St, and draws the thirsty wanderer inside for shelter and a pint, or two, which we can also confirm are lovely.