Victory Plaza is the first completed part of the masterplan, created by us for Qatari Diar/Delancey (QDD), to develop 2,000 new, privately rented apartments in London’s East Village, formerly the site of the 2012 Athletes’ Village. It is the latest stage in our work on the exciting new community that goes back to 2008 and required us to create buildings that would sit well within their context, remain flexible for changing use and uphold a high level of quality. The greatest challenge with the project was to create a building that acted as a suitable backdrop to the popular Victory Park. The towers certainly create a powerful sense of place and point of arrival in Victory Park, and we have anchored them to the site with robust, nine-storey podium buildings built from hand-laid brick that relate in scale and texture to the existing buildings of the Village.
Above the podium buildings are roof gardens that provide private amenity space for the residents. Shops, restaurants and large entrance lobbies at the base of the scheme provide active frontages, and public areas are sheltered by large overhanging canopies in precast concrete. Because the buildings are for private rental, they have to be flexible to accommodate changing living patterns, so have identical cores and floorplates, with ‘plug-and-play’ fittings that rationalise maintenance and replacement, which means the flats can be rented speedily and can change use or tenure over time.
To improve quality and reduce delivery times and disruption to existing residents, we worked with the contractor, MACE, to come up with an innovative method of construction that involved significant prefabrication, including structures, MEP services and cladding, installed from a vertically rising, four-level ‘jump factory’, which completed every storey within an incredible 55 hours.
We worked in collaboration with executive architects, Adamson Associates Architects, who took responsibility for the basement and cores, and maintained consistently high quality with a rigorous inspections procedure. Let by Get Living London, the apartments are available for a fixed sum without deposits, and include a range of units from one- to four-bedroom apartments and penthouses. We are proud to have created buildings that reaffirm our commitment to long-life, loose-fit architecture, with flexible interiors and rationalised, prefabricated components, but also buildings that add another layer to the rich variety that defines this diverse and accessible neighbourhood.
