You can see the wood for the trees
At Maple House, we’ve brought living green space back to a once bleak-feeling Brutalist block. Where residents of Camden social housing once looked down on a flat expanse of astroturf, they now overlook a verdant rooftop forest with over 90 mature trees, thousands of plants and confirmed habitats for solitary bees and house sparrows.
Maple House | Tottenham Court Road
Nature is the antidote to the stresses of modern life. It improves mood, lowers anxiety, and helps us feel more creative and at ease all at once. Yet natural biodiversity is quietly disappearing from city life. For many Londoners, that connection to nature has become harder and harder to find.
A galvanised steel walkway winds through the canopy, so that tenants and visitors can walk among the forest all year round, with biodiversity beneath their feet. A retreat from the indoor world. A place to feel calm, inspired and genuinely connected to nature.
Below the forest, Maple House has been transformed into a research and recovery anchor for one of London’s most important medical neighbourhoods. University College London signed a 10-year lease in 2025, taking 49,500 sq ft of office space, plus 2,200 sq ft of external terraces, for its Health Partnerships, Academic Careers, Research Coordination and Translational Research teams. UCLH occupies the first floor, connected directly to the hospital by a bridge. The one-acre communal garden courtyard is the heart of it all, available to every tenant and team in the building – a biodiverse environment that improves attention, creative problem solving and focus. The rooftop forest doubles as the green roof for ground-floor retail below.
Maple House sits within the Congestion Zone, but in an exempted area, putting it in the rare position of being able to offer parking while actively choosing not to. The former basement car park, once home to 132 spaces, has been reduced to 40, with remaining spaces allocated predominantly to the medical community working in and around the building. The space freed up has been converted into fully furnished showers, changing areas and a bicycle store – making it easier to form healthy habits and come and go by foot or bike.
It’s a place to heal – from above, from the street and from the inside.
Research flourishes here. Recovery blossoms here. And so does the daily restoration that comes from working and living somewhere that takes nature, health and human wellbeing seriously.
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