Southwark Council has approved two commercial buildings, as well as a number of reserved matter applications for Canada Water Dockside Masterplan. This was done on Wednesday (13th September).
The masterplan for the site in south-east London, which includes newly-approved 140,000 square feet, was spearheaded by developer Art-Invest Real Estate.m² of office space next to Canada Water station and the Dock’s waterfront. The dock is located next to Canada Water station. Allies and Morrison’s huge 21ha project for British Land next door.
BIG’s A1 building, a 110m-tall waterside tower, will house ‘flexible’ workspaces with access to terraces across its 24 storeys.
The plan features a series of five vertical blocks that spiral around a core. These create terrace spaces with views over the dock and the city at the lower levels.
Source: March 2022 outline planning approval
Canada Water Dockside
Art-Invest Real Estate say the building’s distinctive tiered form will become a landmark feature at Canada Water.
HWKN’s A2 building, which is set to be built first, will comprise 22,297m² of office space across 11 storeys.
The US-based architect firm, founded by German Matthias Hollwich, has said that the building was designed to achieve a BREEAM Outstanding score.
The masterplan includes workspaces for up to 10,000 people, bars, cafés and restaurants on the waterfront, as well as landscaping by Townshend Landscape Architects and waterside spaces designed by garden designer Andy Sturgeon along the Dock’s eastern edge.
Art-Invest Real Estate says the ‘future-focused’ workspaces will mark ‘a departure from the traditional office offer [with designs which] respond to a post-pandemic paradigm change in aspirations for workplaces’ with connections to the area’s green space and waterside.
The developer said the ground floor of the buildings would be ‘fully-permeable and open to the public’ to ‘blur the lines between inside and outside’.
Plans for the site were outlined approved by Southwark Council in March 2022, and replaced phases 2-4 of an earlier Maccreanor Lavington masterplan, which had featured a 40-storey tower by David Chipperfield Architects.
Andy Young, partner at BIG, said: ‘The proposed design of building A1 was conceived as an antidote to the traditional idea of air-conditioned glass boxes as a place of work.
‘Natural ventilation, garden terraces and a spectacular ground floor, inviting cyclists and pedestrians equally, are all incorporated into a building that takes the form of five sustainable buildings stacked on top of each other, with a twist.’
Matthias Hollwish, founder of HWKN, said his firm ‘intentionally designed our building unlike that of a standard office, but rather to create a place which suggests the atmosphere of a resort which fosters wellbeing and connectivity alongside focused productivity’.
