The BBC Television Centre at White City is shape-shifting from a closed and inaccessible site to a fully inclusive new piece of city. Historic features, such as the original stage door, have been retained, but it has homes, offices, restaurants, a three-screen cinema and a club with a rooftop pool. The public realm is step-free and level with landscaping and plenty of places to sit. The site has been stitched back into the local area and led the regeneration of White City.
Broadgate in the City was seen as a corporate concrete fortress, but a new masterplan is turning it into central London’s largest pedestrianised area. It is designed to house the 30,000 workers based on the office campus and to pull in visitors and passers-by. With more than 32 acres and four open spaces, it is fast becoming a new civic hub that appeals during the day and after office hours with foodie pop-ups, restaurants, screenings and festivals such as Archikids.
The 67-acre King’s Cross regeneration site has been designed to bring together an existing local community and a new one. The new public realm at King’s Cross features parks, squares and gardens, dotted with fountains and long sharing benches. The space between the 1,900 new homes plays host to an events and enlivenment programme intended to prompt conversation and appeal to a diverse audience, from residents to visitors, and workers to academics.
The 30-acre former ship repair yard Smith’s Dock welcomed some of the world’s largest vessels between the 1850s and its closure in the 1980s. The 800-home development (including modular townhouses and apartments) will be built around the three original dock inlets and opens up the coast-to-coast cycle route. Working with the local fishing community, a memorial has been installed for lost men at sea.
Robin Hood Gardens has made way for the £500m residential scheme Blackwall Reach. A total of 1,500 new homes will be built, of which half will be classified as affordable. Local people have been prioritised in this development, with existing tenants rehoused in the first phase and a replacement mosque built. The existing school has been expanded and new landscaped gardens will have contemplation areas and public art.
After decades of dereliction, one of Europe’s largest brick buildings is being brought back to life. The crane-covered Battersea Power Station will house new offices (the Apple campus), 4,000 homes and a 2,000-person event space. The 42-acre public realm has a village hall (where the Battersea Power Station Community Choir rehearses), restaurants, a hairdresser’s, a cinema and a florist. The busy events programme includes food festivals, roller discos and exhibitions such as London Craft Week.
Park Hill in Sheffield is a 1960s housing estate built as part of an effort to clear slums after the war. At the time it was deemed an emblem of social change. However, by the 1990s families had moved out, crime had moved in and the facade had deteriorated. A £100m regeneration project is restoring the building to its Brutalist glory. Now, 700 people live and work on the estate. There is a 30,000sq ft workspace for digital and creative businesses and a rolling exhibition programme. A new mus
Unless you lived locally or were off to a football match, there was no call to visit Wembley. This is changing. The 85-acre site is now home to the 70-store London Designer Outlet, the Hilton hotel, the Troubadour theatre and more than 1,750 homes. Developer Quintain has the green light for a further 115,000 sq ft of office space, a primary school, two nurseries and an NHS health centre for 25,000 patients. The concrete-encased Olympic Way is being transformed into a 400m boulevard of trees.
A total of £1.5bn has been poured into the ongoing transformation of Wapping’s disused dockyards. London Dock will deliver 1,800 homes when completed, and cover more than 15 acres. Aside from historic touches such as the names of spices once carved into the walkways – a nod to goods hauled off the ships – the main feature of London Dock is its openness. The dockside flows into gardens, promenades and plazas for workers to eat lunch and families to play. Pennington Warehouse is now a creative stu