Peninsula Central

Greenwich Peninsula Team
Date19 August 2018

In the heart of it all, the neighbourhood that never stops. Here's Calatrava's towers, Winter Gardens and hours of pretty much everything.

The Place

There are landmarks in London that never fail to evoke wonder. Calatrava’s first UK project on Greenwich Peninsula will be one of them.

Here you will emerge from the tube into a winter garden. You will find an urban forest, a galleria and of pavement cafes and shops. Above you only glass, only sky.

This is Peninsula Place. This is a new 1.4 million square foot landmark for London, designed by Santiago Calatrava and set to transform Greenwich Peninsula.

The Winter Garden

The winter garden will be an urban forest that sits beneath a glass cupola, which floods the space with natural light and unfolds to let in the air and the weather. Above, three towers will gradually step back to reveal a series of green terraces.

But it’s also a place meet for the first time. To say a goodbye. To watch your kids being silly in the sunlight. As Calatrava says, ‘it’s built around emotion’.

The Galleria and Bridge

This vaulting arcade creates a promenade of pavement cafes, shops and restaurants, leading to the foot bridge, which links the galleria to a new public park on the Thames.

Here a giant sundial sits on the prime meridian line.

Architect, Engineer, Artist

Santiago Calatrava was born in 1951 in Valencia, Spain. An architect, engineer and artist, he was initially attracted by the mathematical rigour of great works of historic architecture.

Calatrava then pursued post-graduate studies in Civil Engineering and enrolled in 1975 at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.

What followed was a Canon of work of immeasurable quality 

The Museum of Tomorrow, Rio de Janeiro, numerous major railway stations throughout Europe including Liège-Guillemins TGV Railway Station; The Sharq Crossing, Doha; and The Oculus, the new World Trade Center transport hub.

These are just a few of his international projects. Many of these places revitalised forgotten urban areas and contributed to their cities as important regenerative elements.

A Global leader for tomorrow

His work has been exhibited worldwide including in at MoMA in New York, RIBA in London, Deutsche Museum in Munich, Tokyo’s MA Gallery and Palazzo Strozzi in Florence.

He has received numerous prizes and awards from renowned institutions and organisations including the UIA Auguste Perret Prize, The Gold Medal of the Institution of Structural Engineers, the Royal College of Art “Sir Misha Black Medal” (2002), and the Principe de Asturias Art Prize, and Oviedo, SEFI’s Leonardo da Vinci medal.

Calatrava was named a “Global Leader for Tomorrow” by the World Economic Forum in 1993 and was named as one of the 100 most influential people by Time Magazine in 2005.