Master Planning, strategic planning and urban design for the regeneration of a large council housing estate and shopping center site in Central London. The project was the result of a collaboration between SOM, as Master Planners and Architects, David Chipperfield and Thomas Heatherwick as Architects and Gillespies as Landscape Architect.

The brief included 7,000 residential units,1 million sf of retail, bus and tube transportation hub, a new public park and new urban plazas. The Scheme was developed following the basic underlying principles of

Southwark’s Interpretative Master Plan, but with an eye towards improving the viability and local character of

future development. The new proposal tried to re-establish on site an organic mesh, historically and typologically more similar to the typical London network with clear differentiation of the urban fabric into
four recognizable typologies. In order to contribute to a new site identity, a specific materiality was assigned to each typology so that ‘jewelry like’ towers would emerge from masonry courtyard blocks. Transparent and colorful glass boxes would host civic functions. At the core of the district a market square and linear urban park offers the setting for the gathering of the new community. Its ‘broken’ perimeter creates a series of

enclosed protected spaces with dynamic perspectives and active edges linking cultural, civic and commercial programs.