Battersea Exchange

Battersea Exchange’s vision was to turn a divided, historically landlocked site into a vibrant well-connected community to live, learn and work. It creates 290 new homes – including a range of 1, 2 & 3 bedroom apartments, a new 2 form entry primary school and 4000m2 of commercial space for shops, offices and restaurants, as well as a new Queenstown Road Station entrance. The development is organised around new pedestrian-friendly public realm connecting Battersea Park and Queenstown Road Stations and linking existing residential communities with the new Vauxhall Nine Elms Battersea Opportunity Area. The masterplan established a variety of building scales from two up to eighteen storeys which respond to different contexts across the site. Battersea Exchange incorporates a varied palette of robust and elegant materials. The three ‘landmark’ tall elegant ceramic clad apartment buildings mark the rail frontages into Waterloo as well as the new public space fronting Battersea Park Station. The towers and linked school building use light crackle glazed terracotta with visual links to the fluted chimneys of Battersea power station just north of the development. The ‘warehouse’ typology buildings these run parallel along the viaducts using a dark crisp brick relating to the railway heritage in contrast with the white towers. Their form and length are broken by vertical slots, dividing and stepping the buildings. The third scale of building typologies are the ‘gatehouses’ these are in a creamy warm London stock palette of bricks inspired by the local masonry residential context. This stitches these buildings into the existing fabric, conservation areas and listed buildings context. All the scheme is connected by the pedestrian public street space with cafes, workplaces, start-up studios in refurbished viaduct arches which now link Battersea Park and Queenstown Road Stations. The main residential towers and school form a central urban block with school and early years centre entrances directly onto the new central square. The school is naturally ventilated with good daylight into ever space, the early years and junior teaching rooms open straight onto the courtyard playground. The school also benefits from multilevel external areas from the roof top multi-use game area to the terrace with a dramatic slide down into the school courtyard. The development provides extensive pedestrian links from east to west linking the new development to the local community and north to south between Battersea Park and Queenstown road train Stations and with a car free school entrance. Following the be lean, be clean, be green; the residential units are Code level 4, following the Code for Sustainable Homes, incorporating low energy MVHR, good fabric insulation and PV to roofs. The new build commercial and school are BREEAM ‘excellent’ with generous natural ventilation and daylight to all spaces in the school.