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Embrace Building Wraps has delivered a scaffold wrap for Venture House in Central London, replicating the building’s features at one-to-one scale during refurbishment
Embrace Building Wraps has delivered an ‘ultra-HD’ scaffold wrap for The Crown Estate at Venture House, which aims to seamlessly replicate the architectural features of the building while it undergoes refurbishment.
Venture House, situated at 84 to 94 Regent Street near Piccadilly Circus in central London, is undergoing significant internal upgrades and external restoration as part of The Crown Estate’s ongoing investment across the West End.
Embrace was commissioned to create a ‘one-to-one’ printed wrap that would conceal construction activity while maintaining the prestige of the area.
Covering approximately 450sq m, the wrap spans 43.5m across the façade and rises 10.3m above the gantry. The high-definition printed artwork replicates the building’s Portland stone and architectural detailing to high accuracy.
Embrace delivered full end-to-end management on the project including planning visuals, technical drawings, fabrication, and installation.
The installation, completed in the latter part of last year, incorporates several bespoke requirements.
Two interchangeable central panels allow The Crown Estate to incorporate both social-value messaging and future commercial advertising.
Three panels also include custom openings which were utilised for Westminster City Council’s Christmas lighting and its existing flagpoles. The scaffold towers were clad in painted ply, and a “living vertical meadow” for plants and vegetation is planned to be introduced along the gantry’s leading edge.
The company first created a CGI façade before producing nine wide-format PVC panels printed in high-dpi ‘ultra-HD’ with UV-stable inks.
With 22% of panel edges reportedly requiring perfect joins, Embrace engineered a bespoke tensioning system to maintain consistency. A removable Velcro-seamed panel is designed to enable safe access for operatives working behind the wrap.
Discreet LED spotlights were also installed on the gantry to ensure proper night-time appearance.
Greg Forster, managing director of Embrace Building Wraps, says: “Projects of this scale and complexity demand absolute precision and collaboration.
“It took six months of planning and teamwork with The Crown Estate, their planners, the main contractor BAM and GKR Scaffolding. When everything aligns from the artwork to the last fixing that’s when the magic happens. The result speaks for itself, and our client is delighted with both the quality and the impact.”
