Maison Peplum
Jupps Warehouse, Brentford, London
A textile-led architectural response to Jupps Warehouse. The movement and folds of the peplum jacket inform a sculptural façade of repeated curved fins over the existing warehouse, while the building supports making, exhibition and community use.
Interpretive 3D study based on the portfolio drawings
This model was built from the plans, section, façade assembly list and model photographs on portfolio pages 8–12. No CAD file or dimensions were supplied, so proportions are read from the drawings and the fin profiles are generated procedurally to match the wave rhythm seen in the 1:200 façade model. It shows massing and the fin system, not a construction-accurate assembly.
- Overall proportions (length, width, eaves and ridge heights) are scaled from the 1:50 section and the ground plan; no dimensions appear in the source.
- The fin count and spacing are chosen to reproduce the rhythm visible in the façade model and renders, not counted from a drawing.
- The fins are read as curved timber-coloured sheets; the source names a hanger rib, fin support rib and unistrut connector but does not detail their sizes.
- The existing warehouse is modelled as a simple two-storey pitched-roof shell with glazed long façades and a recessed glazed ground floor under cantilevered steel beams, as drawn in the section.
- The assembly control separates fins, structure and roof for legibility; it is an interpretive study, not a construction sequence.
- Jupps Warehouse, Brentford, London
- Adaptive reuse — making, exhibition and community use
- Café, outlet and showroom, principal studios, haberdashery and textiles supplies, offices, storage
- Academic design project
The design question
How can a garment’s construction become a building’s envelope? The project begins with the peplum jacket: a fitted body with a flared, folded hem. Deconstruction drawings isolate the hem, the pleat and the seam, and ask what each would do at the scale of a warehouse façade.
Tala’s initial response looked at the neoclassical period in which the peplum jacket was created, with its focus on geometry, symmetry and linear lines, alongside the steel frame of Jupps Warehouse. Over time the tectonic studies moved towards organic, flowing movement, replicating the folds of the jacket, and a clay study opened the way to the parametric façade adopted for the building.
Concept study for Maison Peplum, with timber cladding that folds open at the corner, informed by the peplum jacket, above a brick ground floor.
Parametric wall façade study from the Maison Peplum concept collage, with a rippled timber skin and projecting box windows.
Street-level concept study of the rippled timber façade with projecting box windows, from the Maison Peplum concept collage.
Pattern-drafting studies deconstructing the peplum jacket into its bodice and flared hem pieces.
Garment to building
A repeated system of curved fins gives the building its distinctive silhouette. Physical studies trace the translation: a gridded card-and-timber tectonic model with folded canopies, clay studies of fabric in motion, and a 1:200 model in which rows of wave-profiled fins wrap the warehouse like a hem.
Triangular card fins over the timber lattice of the early tectonic model, a first step towards the repeated fins of the façade.
Early tectonic model for Maison Peplum: a timber lattice beneath a folded card roof with triangular fins.
Clay tectonic study replicating the organic folds of the peplum jacket.
Clay tectonic study whose draped folds led to the parametric façade of Maison Peplum.
The 1:200 parametric façade model seen from five angles: repeated curved laser-cut fins wrapping the roof and long wall of the card warehouse.
The long elevation of the 1:200 façade model, with the standing fins in front of the warehouse wall and the roof fins above.
Plan, programme and context
The warehouse sits on a narrow site between a canal and the surrounding streets of Brentford. The ground plan opens a café, an outlet and showroom and washrooms towards the water; principal studios, haberdashery and textile supplies, offices and storage are arranged across the two floors. The exploded axonometric separates roof, upper floor, ground floor and site to show how the programme stacks within the retained shell.
Floor plan of Maison Peplum in its Brentford context, between the canal basin and the road bridge.
Roof plan of Maison Peplum in context, showing the curved timber fins wrapping the existing warehouse.
Exploded axonometric of Maison Peplum, separating the fin-covered roof from the three floor levels, with numbered programme tags.
Section, envelope and structure
The 1:50 section presents spatial experience and construction logic together. Inside the existing brick, steel-framed shell two floors are connected by a timber stair; the fins rise on both faces and over the roof; the upper floor is carried on cantilevered steel beams with cross bracing above a recessed, glazed ground floor that meets the canal walk.
The façade assembly is listed from the inside out — unistrut connector, hanger rib, fin support rib, the fins themselves, screen brackets, glazing wall frame and spandrels, cantilever steel beam, mullions and transoms, and cross-braced steel frames — and a wall build-up detail shows the existing timber and steel frames, insulation, CLT and brick cladding, the hanging rib and support panel, spacer and ventilation gap.
The 1:50 section through Maison Peplum, with the curved timber fins wrapping the existing pitched roof above the mezzanine, stair and ground-floor café.
The façade assembly drawn as a sectional perspective, keyed to its fins, ribs, brackets, glazing frame and cross-braced steel frames.
Wall build-up through the existing warehouse frame, with the fin panel drawn in elevation, section and exploded axonometric.
Call-out of the fin fixing, where the hanger rib and fin support rib meet the unistrut connector on the glazing wall frame.
The fin panel drawn in elevation, section and exploded axonometric, showing how the hanger ribs and panel support carry the finned panel.
The building, light and model
At night the fins read as a lantern: the glazed floors behind them glow through the timber rhythm. Inside, the showroom opens under the folded ceiling of the fins. A 1:50 section model and the 1:200 façade model record how the pleated envelope meets the warehouse.
Night-time external render of Maison Peplum, the curved timber fins lit from within the former Jupps Warehouse in Brentford.
Interior render of the main hall of Maison Peplum, with dress forms beneath the rooflight and a timber stepped stair against the whitewashed brick.
The 1:50 section model of Maison Peplum, with curved black card fins draped over the sectioned white card building.
The 1:50 section model of Maison Peplum seen from its sectioned side.