The property, at 18 Upper Grosvenor Street, is a 30-room grade II-listed 1730s mansion worth an estimated £6.25 million owned by the billionaire Duke of Westminster, Britain's wealthiest private landlord.
In 2005, he and partner Bogna McAndrew formed "a London equivalent of Chez Robert" in a six-story home on Kensington High Street.
[4] The members held a 24-hour occupancy in keeping with Land Registration Act 2002, which states that squatters must occupy for ten years before applying for ownership - at the time, squatting in a residential property was still a civil offense.
[2] In a statement delivered from the balcony (bedecked with a blacked-out tattered Union Jack), Stephanie Smith declared: Who we are is not important.
This project was titled "The Temporary School of Thought",[7] and featured free and open group activities such as deschooling sessions, labyrinth-building and French book-binding.
[8] In 2011, McAndrew started a project called InEmptyBuildings - later named ma.ke-u.se (stylized as m@ke-u.se) which aimed to "enable artists, to support and stimulate each other; by using vacant commercial buildings in central London, at very low cost, on a short term basis.
"[9] Later, as the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 implemented harsher offenses for squatting, the project shifted to creating a "practical, media savvy, pro-squatting campaign to reverse the direction in which the law is currently heading".