Greenford Quay is the UK’s first large-scale purpose designed Build-to-Rent development offering a different way to live. It uses scale, with 2,000 homes consented overall, to provide higher quality housing with additional facilities not normally associated with rental housing in London.
The Greenford site will revitalise 8.64hectares of derelict industrial land in North Ealing to create a mixed-use neighbourhood with 3.4 hectares of public realm at its heart. The masterplan has been specifically designed to meet the unique operational requirements of the Build to Rent model that Greystar has over 25 years’ experience of in the US, while creating a development that reflects the particular characteristics of the site.
The residential-led mixed-use masterplan contains bespoke designed Build-To-Rent housing, private sale and affordable tenures which will bring together a mixed community. The Ground Floor levels of the buildings are given over entirely to various commercial uses to bring employment to the area and activate the streets, the buildings and the community. Included within the commercial spaces are place management facilities for the developer-operator who has long-term investment in the site and will ensure the public realm is well kept and encourage the community to flourish alongside plans for a new school on the site too.
Greenford Quay re-opens the long derelict Glaxosmithkline site within Greenford inviting the public back into the area that had been closed off for decades. New streets, a striking new bridge and a new canal side walk connect this place into the existing neighbourhood and beyond to overground and tube stations, on the Central & Piccadilly lines at Greenford Station.
Where the canal was previously enclosed and private, it is now the public focus of the whole place. The new bridge will provide better access to the adjacent Black Horse pub whilst the new canal walk provides a connection to Horsenden Hill. We have used the demolition material from the old factories to raise the site level and create a new south facing amphitheatre leading people down from Tillermans to the quayside.
The site and buildings have been designed using a mixture of traditional and modern materials that reflect the history and heritage of the site, that are robust and hard-wearing.
Constant community engagement with local interest groups, members and residents throughout the process meant very few objections from neighbours when it came to committee. Local requests (for a new school and health centre, for example) were taken on board during the design process and enshrined in the planning submission.
This is very much a landscape-led masterplan with 40% of Greenford consisting of pockets of green public open space, a canalside setting, play areas, new trees, a large water feature and a significant public square at the centre of the development.
Detailed Planning consent for the scheme was achieved in 2017, with HTA acting as Lead Consultant, Masterplanner, Block Architect and Landscape Architect, working in collaboration with a team of other architects (Mae, Hawkins/Brown, SLCE and Flannagan Lawrence) to design the details of each building, as well as the school and the refurbishment of the listed 1930’s Glaxo Headquarters building.
