Oxo revival.

A relic of London's industrial past, the Oxo Tower building has been inventively remodelled to engage with the busy cultural and commercial life of the city.

Once lined with grime encrusted warehouses, London's South Bank has gradually evolved into a modern cultural and commercial riverside strip. The stalwart functionalism of industry has given way to a heterogeneous assortment of buildings baying across the River Thames. Just east of the beton brut grandeur of the National Theatre and the execrable King's Reach Tower lies the Oxo building, preserved like an archaeological specimen as the sole reminder of the area's past life. Originally constructed at the turn of the century as a Post Office generating station, it was extensively remodelled as a meat warehouse between 1928 and 1930, acquiring, in the process, its famous Art Deco tower. Punctuated by a trio of glazed apertures that might look like innocuous noughts and crosses, they actually spell out 'OXO', the name of the British meat products company. Designed by A. W. Moore, this brazen appendage cunningly circumvented restrictions on advertising along the river and has now assumed the status of minor London landmark.

After a long period of uncertainty, the original building has now been inventively remodelled for mixed residential and commercial use. Five intermediate floors provide 78 flats for Coin Street Secondary Housing Association (occupied by people who either live or work in the local borough), while the lower three storeys have been refurbished to house designer studios and small speciality shops. On the second floor overlooking the dramatic sweep of the river from St Paul's Cathedral to Charing Cross Station, is a cheerfully demotic cafe designed by Apicella Associates.

Lifschutz Davidson's refurbishment strategy responds to the building's heroically muscular character. The old slate and lead roof has been removed and replaced by a new aerofoil structure which forms a delicate yet expressive lid to the monolithic building below. It also creates a stunning double-height space, now housing two smart metropolitan restaurants and a bar operated by Harvey Nichols. In summer patrons can spill out on to a vertiginous terrace with possibly the best dining views in London. The underside of the roof consists of ingenious moveable fins that change the colour of the ceiling from white during the day to an intense ultramarine during the evening. The colour change eliminates internal reflections at night as well as allowing variation of both the lighting and acoustic levels to create a highly responsive space. At night the restaurant appears as a seductively luminous volume perched on a dark cliff, marked out by the glowing Oxo minaret.

The range of new uses has been pragmatically reconciled with the constraints of the existing basic warehouse structure. Three new 10-storey circulation and service cores were inserted, one at each end and one in the centre of the building. The end cores visually contain the building's block-like mass, while the central core continues the vertical penetration of this mass by the Oxo spire. The riverside elevation responds to the scale and rhythm of the wharf typology. Old loading bays become doors opening on to crisply detailed new timber and metal balconies for each flat. Residential floors are organised around an east-west running spine corridor. Individual flats are simply planned and integrated with the existing structure. Below the flats are the commercial areas, consisting of cellular workshops and shops. Here, glazed frontages reveal the building's massive original columns. Galleries cantilevered off the edges of the floors combine with linking corridors around the cores to provide circulation around the units. Once fully occupied, the atmosphere should resemble a lively, cosmopolitan souk, drawing visitors down river from the existing Gabriel's Wharf craft market.

The second phase of the project will create more workshops, an employment training centre, a pub and management offices. The Oxo Tower building will be linked to the smaller adjacent Barge House building by a series of five fabric and glass tents. The enclosed intervening space will be used for a range of entertainment and public events. The meringue peaks of the tents are supported by steel pylons cantilevering off the Oxo Tower building, their trussed structure reminiscent of the original cranes fixed to .riverside warehouses. The covered space will be surrounded by elevated galleries linked by moveable bridges and stairs, that can be repositioned as events demand.

Oxo's revival is based around an idealistic paradigm of genuinely mixed use, carefully inserted into the existing fabric. In reconciling the various public and private functions, there have been occasional conflicts of interest, but instead of a redundant husk, London's South Bank now boasts a splendidly restored building vigorously engaged with the life of the city.