Studio Apartments - Barbican & Farringdon

Together making up an area known as Clerkenwell, this area amply demonstrates how new life and vitality can emerge out of a dense urban fabric. It acts as a kind of fulcrum between the City and the vibrant suburbs to the north and also takes office overspill from both the Square Mile and the West End.

The Barbican is the home of the eponymously named Arts Centre which hosts major cultural events and is the London home of The Royal Shakespeare Company whereas The Eagle in Farringdon enjoys the distinction of being the country’s first gastropub which is hardly a surprise since Smithfield meat market is on its doorstep. A place for cattle- and horse-trading since the middle ages, Smithfield signals a modern transition with nightclubbers packing into the Victorian warehouse buildings-turned-dance venues most nights of the week.

Transformation continues in Clerkenwell as a whole, as a district once known for its light industrial buildings and lively printing presses provides sought after loft space for stylish conversions. Animated by journalists from The Guardian newspaper and a number of internationally renowned architectural figures, such as Zaha Hadid, this strategically located neighbourhood embodies that typically London alchemy in which the old world and new ideas fuse into something exciting and unexpected.