Lots Road, London
1996-ongoing

Terry Farrell and Partners are working on the redevelopment of the Lots Road Power Station and site. The Power Station, built in 1904, occupies a wide concave bend of the Thames. TFP’s objective is to unify an important but fractured district of London with physical, social and visual permeability. The site is split between two boroughs: Kensington & Chelsea and Hammersmith & Fulham, the boundary running through the centre line of Chelsea Creek.

Lots Road is a benchmark scheme, illustrating how good quality design and urban planning can make the best of limited land resource. It responds to the government’s agenda on regeneration of industrial land, delivering world class design on an important brownfield site. The mixed-used scheme includes approximately 800 apartments, with some commercial space and retail outlets for neighbourhood-type shops. It incorporates both private and affordable housing (47% across both boroughs). Support for the scheme has come from the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE), English Heritage, the Greater London Authority and Transport for London.

The intention is to create a ‘new village’ to connect the Lots Road neighbourhood on one side with Chelsea Harbour and Imperial Wharf on the other. It will create one of the largest covered public streets in London and open around 600 metres of river and creek to public use for the first time in over a hundred years. The creek will become a new linear park and water garden.

TFP’s proposals focus on the retention and conversion of the power station building, which formerly powered London’s underground system but has now been decommissioned. The shell will be transformed into a unique mixed-use community development.

Two new residential towers located on either side of the creek entrance have been carefully conceived to form a powerful visual grouping. The power station sits comfortably between the slim 37-storey south tower and the 25-storey north tower, which contain a mix of apartments with spectacular penthouses under the sloping glass roofs. The long east-west orientation of the two towers ensure maximum optimization of views but, quite deliberately, they are not aligned. This displacement is a sensitive response to the inflection of the Thames and of Chelsea Creek itself. It reinforces their sentinel role at the mouth of the creek, framing both the creek’s opening and the power station. Like a dancing couple, the pair of towers will create a dynamic form when seen from different viewpoints.