Lots Road Power Station Development

London, UK

Project details
Client

Hutchison Property Group (UK) Ltd

Architect

Farrells, Formation Architects and BTPW

Duration

2010-2024

Services provided by Buro Happold

Bridge engineering and civil structures, Facade engineering, Ground engineering, Infrastructure, Lighting design, Structural engineering, Sustainability, Transport and mobility, Water

From 1902 to 1998 Lots Road Power Station fuelled the London Underground. At the time of its construction, it was dubbed the largest power station ever built. It burned 700 tonnes of coal per day, which allowed District Line trains to make the transition from steam to electric. The station eventually powered most of the London Underground.

A new vision will see it turned into an expansive dual-site residentially-led development. Split by a creek across the boroughs of Hammersmith and Fulham and Kensington and Chelsea, the site will provide one million square feet of luxury accommodation. It will be the last of the three great power stations along the Thames to be returned to use, following the conversion of Bankside into the Tate Modern and Battersea Power Station into a mixed-use complex.

Challenge

Lots Road was decommissioned in 2002, at which point the Tube became fully powered by the National Grid. In 2013, the area was rebranded as Chelsea Waterfront, a riverside development comprising ten buildings. This includes Tower West, the tallest residential building in SW10 at 37 stories, and Powerhouse – the new name for the former power station building. Buro Happold’s multidisciplinary team was engaged to provide design and advisory input across both the new buildings and the adaptive reuse of the power station itself.

Although Lots Road is not a listed building, it has been issued with the first licence of its kind from English Heritage to allow development whilst preserving its rich history. The facade and some key features of the power station are to be kept, presenting us with the challenge of weaving 21st Century high-end living spaces into a 120-year-old industrial complex.

The strict planning restrictions on the development required innovative structural solutions from our team. The current structure is testament to more than a century of upgrades, a virtual east to west cross-section of historical steelwork added in over the years. Our teams were working on the redevelopment of Lots Road Power Station at the same time as many experts from across Buro Happold were working on another significant restoration/regeneration project close by. We were able to transfer many of our learnings from this project to enhance the Lots Road project, particularly in terms of understanding the best approaches to intrusive investigations into existing industrial fabric to assess an historic structure for reuse.

The exterior of the building has retained much of its original structure of the former Lots Road Power Station, which closed in 2002. Image: Hutchison Property Group.

Solution

The English Heritage licence demanded the retention of various sections and the restoration of the facade, so to marry this to the architect’s vision our experts designed a ‘building within a building’ solution, using the latest digital 3D modelling. Our implementation of this enabled a full co-ordination of old and new.

Supporting the new superstructure on the existing site demanded an holistic approach from our ground and structural engineers. The decision was taken to retain the current foundations but dig in a new double basement to balance the additional weight and stresses from the building’s new purpose. This new basement cleverly exploits the original 1902 features to provide bountiful car parking spaces for the new residents.

While the new structure built within the power station is entirely self-supporting, lateral structural interfaces tie the shell of the old building to the reinforced concrete floors of the new structure within, allowing for required movements. Our facades team also had a compliance monitoring role, supporting the facade design and implementation across Powerhouse and four other buildings across the site.

Bespoke solutions had to be developed for accommodating the largescale redundant infrastructure on the site, such as large inlet and outlet tunnels, which once delivered water from the Thames to be used for cooling processes within the power station. We also worked closely with Thames Water to achieve a series of significant build-over agreements, to allow the new structures to be developed over a range of subterranean assets. Our water engineering experts developed a flood risk management strategy for the site. They also liaised closely with the Port of London Authority and advised on a range of

interventions to enhance the historic river wall, building greater resilience against the future flooding impacts of climate change.

Our bridges team worked on the design for a small pedestrian bridge over the creek, connecting the two halves of the site. As well as maintaining the industrial heritage of the site, the project delivered an embodied carbon saving by retaining the existing fabric and reusing it as the facade of the new apartment building. The biodiversity of the site was also enhanced with landscaping. Full height evergreen trees have been placed where Lots Road’s turbines once stood. Water features run between the vast chimneys, which rise to 275ft above the Thames.

The former chimneys have been restored and have been capped with glass. Image: Hutchison Property Group.
Pictured is the restored facade of the power station which for decades provided the entire London Underground with electricity. Image: Hutchison Property Group.

Value

The reimagined power station building will stand at the heart of an 8.85-acre redevelopment, framed by the two new glass residential towers at the mouth of the creek.

When it completes in 2024, this repurposed icon of London’s Victorian heritage, will offer 260 luxury flats and help to restore and revive this historic section of the Thames riverside. Our broad, multidisciplinary team delivered critical input across a range of services, acting as a true trusted advisor to the client and working closely with a range of collaborators and architects to realise this major regeneration.

Rendered image shows what the bedroom in the flats will look like when completed. Image: Hutchison Property Group.