OMA reveals ‘green façade’ tower cluster on Greenwich Peninsula

Rem Koolhaas’s practice has drawn up plans for developer U+I which include a crop of towers of up to 37 storeys high on a 7.6ha site next to the O2 Arena.

Under the plans, currently out for public consultation, the former Tate & Lyle sweeteners refinery will be redeveloped for a 178,300 m² mixed-use scheme in 10 buildings.

To be called Morden Wharf, the scheme is expected to deliver 1,500 homes with 35 per cent affordable, a large riverfront public park and the refurbishment of existing warehouses.

The designs for the high-rises include vertical and horizontal ’green façades’, which the developer said were inspired by Jean Nouvel’s Le Nouvel KLCC tower in Kuala Lumpur.

The second tallest tower also features a tapering base, handing over more space to the public realm. 

The scheme, which has a gross development value of £775 million, also proposes a riverfront bar or restaurant, children’s nursery, community space and retail space.

OMA was first appointed to masterplan the site in 2013 after the site was bought by Cathedral Group and Development Securities, which later merged to form U+I.

While the north of the site remains active industrial land, much of the southern site was cleared in 2009, apart from a large brick warehouse building and a former office building along Tunnel Avenue. 

Elsewhere on the peninsula, Santiago Calatrava is drawing up plans for a £1 billion development of the area surrounding North Greenwich tube for developer Knight Dragon.

The eye-catching scheme was unveiled to great fanfare in February 2017, but no planning application has yet come forward for the site.

However it emerged over summer that Calatrava’s centrepiece – a cluster of towers resembling an upturned stool – looked set to be axed from the project.