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PROJECT REPORT: MIXED USE SCHEMES
EXTERNAL & INTERNAL HARMONY
An eye-catching ‘faceted’ canopy of steel and glass sits over part of the elevated public realm; facing page shows CGI of the workspace lobby at Olympia Central
The closure and demolition of nearby
Earl’s Court in 2016, while a concern for events venues generally as it followed declining visitor numbers, gave Olympia further rights to be seen as west London’s major event venue. While it remained in competition with other big players like ExCel, it provides a distinctly different, more urban offering. The way was clear to invest in a major scheme here in West Kensington, but the commercial context also sharpened the focus on making it a multi-faceted proposition. It needs to attract as many staff to its workplaces post-Covid as audience members for its shows and concerts.
Eliot Postma of Heatherwick Studio says that the site wasn’t a destination unless you were attending a show, so the core aim was to ensure that people would be drawn to an exciting and welcoming new range of spaces and functions. “It was never a destination for me as a Londoner, if you weren’t going to the double glazing convention or the Ideal Home show.” Trevor Morriss explains how this manifested in the brief, which was “relatively open,” and essentially amounted to: “How do we make this a place that you would go to if you weren’t going to an exhibition?”
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A linked proposition The ‘double-headed’ client’s main driver was to protect and grow the exhibition business ( exhibitions would continue uninterrupted throughout the development, a major feat of coordination despite the reduced disruption oddly facilitated by Covid). Developing the other aspects of the site were crucial to the value of the scheme for the location and commercially, but they had to be progressed in a way that they didn’t hamper the exhibitions and events at Olympia.
The potential was huge, but the design challenge was fairly daunting, as Trevor Morriss explains: “We were deep in Borough Yards at the time [a major heritage restoration scheme in south London], and we thought that was a complicated piece of engineering, but then we realised we would be building over, through and on live exhibition centres, and that kind of took complexity to another level!” The combination of this fundamental constraint and the openness to the designers made the brief “refreshing,” says Morriss: “It didn’t say we want a theatre or a music venue or office of this size, and that became organic as we started to unlock the master plan.” He continues: “We unlocked the ground plane by going back into
ADF APRIL 2024
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