Silvertown

Silvertown is a key site in the London maritime docks and industrial history, created in 1820s. After decades of neglect and inaccessibility, the site will be opened to the public. A multi-phase construction programme to transform the site over the next 20 years.

Project Details +

Project Details

LOCATION: Silvertown, London
CLIENT: Lendlease
DATE: 2019
STATUS: Feasibility study
SIZE: 400,000m2 (15,000m2 Market, 5,000m2 Hotel, 10,000m2 Sports, 25,000m2 Performance/Cinema, 5,000m2 Education)

Credits +

Credits

ACME: Ohyun Kwon, Duarte Lobo Antunes, Friedrich Ludewig, Delayne S Rutter

Silvertown munitions factory

Silvertown explosion

Silvertown today

In 1917 a large part of Silvertown was destroyed when an adjacent ammunition factory exploded. What remains to this day are the maritime docks and several vast flour silos, an industrial wasteland so desolate and imposing that it was used by Stanley Kubrick as a stand-in for Vietnam in the shooting of Apocalypse Now, filmed here on location in Silvertown.

0 Years

3 Years

5 Years

7 Years

9+ Years

Completed Masterplan

Activation ebbs and flows through the site, moving to avoid construction - with both civic and leisure uses within a rich and diverse meanwhile use programme. The temporary city capitalises on its waterfront location, integrating water based activations such as sauna, swimming pool, waterside theatre, combined with floating opera, university, markets and art pieces. Allowing elements of infrastructure and programme to float on water provides opportunity to move and anchor them anew every year within the dock structure.

Land based pavilion

Water based pavilion

The Silvertown temporary city begins welcoming the community back to the site and becomes a place that allows uses to grow and evolve, until they eventually become part of the permanent fabric of the emerging city.