The Waterman on Greenwich Peninsula, London Architecture, Housing Complex Buildings, Property Images

The Waterman on Greenwich Peninsula

Apartment Buildings Development in Southeast London, UK – design by Pilbrow & Partners

8 Feb 2018

The Waterman, London

Architects: Pilbrow & Partners

Location: Greenwich Peninsula, London, England

The Waterman

photo © Justin Piperger

Pilbrow & Partners has completed the first building as part of the Greenwich Peninsula masterplan for Knight Dragon. The Waterman will deliver 269 new homes and a public square at the heart of the new urban district.

photo © Justin Piperger

Two months after Pilbrow & Partners was established in 2013, the practice won an invited competition to develop a vision for creating a mixed-tenure community on the east of the Greenwich Peninsula. The practice proposed an urban typology which integrated traditional courtyard blocks with strategically placed tall buildings. The courtyards deliver well-scaled streets and the tall buildings denote the position of new public squares. The Waterman contains each of the masterplan’s elements including a new public space, a low-rise parameter courtyard and a slender tall building.

photos © Peter Cook

A six-storey low-rise building creates carefully-scaled street facades at the perimeter of the block and a private internal garden for residents. Townhouses activate the base of the building; their two-storey scale expressed as a robust stone plinth. The top floor is recessed as an attic, facing the coal loader jetty on the River Thames; this floor is drawn forward to create four dramatic, cantilevered penthouses.

photo © Peter Cook

The tower building is arranged as two wings flanking the central core. Each wing contains three flats so that every apartment is dual aspect. L-shaped living rooms are set around generous corner balconies to maximise panoramic views, with the upper-most floors reduced to one wing only with a communal residential garden, planned where the building sets back.

Fred Pilbrow, Founding Partner at Pilbrow & Partners said: “As our first completed project, The Waterman is a well-considered urban and architectural design proposition. Its high standard of detail reflects the commitment of our team working closely with a great client and contractor. For us, it is also a statement of our ambition to address the challenge of building sustainable neighbourhoods which integrate disparate housing tenures into a single community.”

photos © Peter Cook

Ground floor residential accommodation has been constructed above semi-recessed parking so that the apartments are lifted above the public realm with private terraces that overlook the footway; a contemporary reinterpretation of the classic Georgian section. Full disabled access is provided by lifting Tidemill Square up over the parking and using the gentle rise of the roads to deliver fully accessible entrances for all.

photos © Justin Piperger

The Waterman offers a residents’ garden that forms part of a range of communal facilities which includes a club room and cinema, which is projected into the portico that overlooks Tidemill Square.

Richard Margree, CEO of Knight Dragon, said: “It’s great to see a community continuing to form on the Peninsula, with the completion of The Waterman, one of its first residences. The Waterman’s panoramic views of the river, modern architecture, clean lines and residents communal gardens make it a popular choice for riverside living.”

photo © Peter Cook

About Pilbrow & Partners
Pilbrow & Partners is a 70-strong architecture and urban design studio, established in 2013. The practice is led by partners Fred Pilbrow, Tal Ben-Amar, Keb Garavito Bruhn, Sam Yousif and Gareth Wilkins, and specialises in complex mixed-use projects in sensitive heritage contexts.

As well as a team of architects and urban planners, the practice is supported by specialist resources in town planning, environmental analysis, parametric modelling, BIM, visualisation and model making.

Recent and current projects include The Waterman in Greenwich Peninsula, the new UCLH phase 5 hospital in Bloomsbury (awarded the American Architecture Prize 2017 and Planning award 2017) and the design of The Market Building at Canary Wharf’s new Wood Wharf district (overall winner of AJ’s Architecture Tomorrow 2016). Pilbrow & Partners is also working for U+I on the redevelopment of 8 Albert Embankment including new homes, workspace, retail and a new home for the London Fire Brigade Museum.

photo © Peter Cook

About Greenwich Peninsula
Greenwich Peninsula is London’s largest single regeneration project. The £8.4 billion transformation of the Peninsula will over the coming years provide 15,720 new homes in seven new neighbourhoods: home to a new mixed-use tube station by Santiago Calatrava, a new Design District, schools, offices, health services and public spaces, all wrapped by 1.6 miles of River Thames.

photo © Peter Cook

The Waterman Greenwich Peninsula – Building Information

Client: Knight Dragon Development Ltd
Architect: Pilbrow & Partners
Structural Engineer: CH2M
M&E / Sustainability Engineer: Hoare Lea
Landscape Architect: Turkington Martin
Project Manager: AECOM
Cost Consultant: AECOM
Contractor: Wates
Façade: Buro Happold

photo © Justin Piperger