B9X South Bank, London
Corstorphine & Wright’s plans for a new 58,000sqft purpose-built laboratory building on the South Bank in London have been given the green light.
Sitting directly behind the Albert Embankment River Wall, the building looks out across the River Thames to the Palace of Westminster and Westminster Abbey World Heritage Site. The site is within the Albert Embankment Conservation Area; is adjacent to Lambeth Palace and subject to a number of key protected London views.
The proposals will provide life sciences accommodation, incorporating environmentally controlled laboratories and write-up spaces for a new life sciences facility within the context of an existing vacant building on the existing St Thomas’ hospital site.
The site presented several challenges including several protected views – such as the millennia old view between Westminster and Lambeth Palace, as well as the listed memorial wall, most recently commemorating the victims of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The developed design solution provides the opportunity for hyper flexible floor plates supporting the delivery of CL2 labs and clean room solutions.
As part of our design strategy, the upper floor which benefits from views of the river Thames, provides dry lab and a communal office space to encourage interaction between tenants – supporting the building ecosystem and users to develop from start up to grow-on enterprises.
The design team have worked hard to create a sensitive, low-level addition to the South Bank of the Thames. The proposal is defined by a continuous band of external fins which provide an environmental shield to laboratory functions, whilst ensuring the building respects important views from the Palace of Westminster. The rhythm, density and angles of the fins change along the façade to answer a complex number of internal and external considerations giving a continuous, varied second skin to the architecture.
People behind the project
