伦敦奥运公园传媒与广播中心改造丨Hawkins\Brown

Firm： Hawkins\Brown

Type： Commercial › Exhibition Center Office Retail Educational › University

STATUS： Built

YEAR： 2018

SIZE： 100,000 sqft - 300,000 sqft

The radical redevelopment of the former Press and Broadcast Centre on the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park provides over one million square feet of work and retail space, bringing together global corporations with start-ups, creative industries, and academic institutions.

Every Olympic Games needs a vast media hub, but the problem is what to do with the buildings afterwards. By focusing on the incredible data connectivity left behind by the Games, Here East knew the site would make an ideal technology campus. But they also knew it would be difficult to refurbish and fill the buildings’ cavernous interior – that is where we came in! Taking inspiration from the tight-knit, light industrial factories and yards of neighbouring Hackney Wick, we imaginatively redeveloped the whole site, repurposing interior, and external spaces to create a real sense of community.

The Broadcast Centre, a 280-metre-long, windowless shed, offered structural and spatial generosity that allowed us to create flexible new floor plates, designing for those unexpected collisions and informal collaborations so necessary for creative, media and digital industries. We maximised natural light and ventilation by replacing the windowless envelope with a fritted glass “dazzle” façade and cut full height atrium spaces into the floor plates. Tenants include BT Sport studios, Loughborough University and Wayne McGregor’s dance company.

The Press Centre is now home to Plexal, an innovation centre and coworking space; while The Theatre, a new 950-seat auditorium, hosts product launches and conferences.

The massive steel structure that runs along the side of Here East has been renamed The Gantry and repurposed to create 20 colourful house-shaped studios. Built using open-source Wikihouse technology, each studio is machine milled and arrives on site flat-packed. They are then are slotted together like a massive jigsaw before being lifted into place.