The legendary 1960s West End building that is being transformed into a vast shopping centre

Plans to transform the former home of BHS and the London College of Fashion (LCF) in Oxford Circus have been given the green light. First announced in August, the proposals to turn 33 Cavendish Square into a massive office block and shopping centre are officially going ahead.

Westminster City Council has unanimously granted planning permission to developers Berkeley Estate Asset Management (BEAM) and architects Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF) to renovate the historic building that is just round the corner for Oxford Circus tube station. 

The building was occupied by the high street stalwart BHS from 1961 until 2016 when the company went bust. UAL’s London College of Fashion campus was also housed there until 2023 when it relocated to Stratford.

Prior to the council’s decision a group of campaigners had launched a petition to save the building that opened in the early ‘60s, calling it ‘a key example of mid-20th-century modernist educational design’. The group, mainly made up of LCF alumni, said they were ‘calling on the developers to reconsider and preserve, restore or integrate this iconic West End site’. However, the full renovation will still go ahead. 

Under the new proposals 33 Cavendish Square will become a mixed-use office, cultural and retail building, and have its façade remodelled. It will be home to 75,000 square metres of offices, with 3,500 square metres of retail and cultural space. It will also have an auditorium, that developers said could host TED talks, product launches and fashion shows. More than half of the existing building will be retained and given an eco-friendly facelift, becoming all-electric and net zero.   

John Bushell, principal at KPF said in a statement: ‘This is a thoroughly modern building, designed to resonate with the best of the large buildings along Oxford Street, responding to their composition, scale and materiality. We carried out extensive analysis of the existing buildings to create a scheme that restores a coherent urban form and is an exemplary guardian of embodied carbon.’

Works are expected to begin in 2029, with an estimated completion date of 2033. 

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