Greenwich Millennium Village

London

A project of Greenwich Millennium Village Ltd in conjunction with the Mayor of London (Formerly Homes and Communities Agency/English Partnerships)

Greenwich Millennium Village was the first of the UK Governments Millennium Communities programme projects. Located on the once heavily industrialised Greenwich Peninsula in South East London the project creates an exemplar new brownfield community building upon concepts identified in the UK Governments Urban Task Force, 1997 report - Towards an Urban Rennaissance and the 1997 Sir John Egan, Rethinking Construction report. 

Won in international competition, a masterplan by Swedish architect Ralph Erskine sought to rethink the idea of the London Garden Square surrounded by a range of houses and apartments and set in a predominately traffic free environment. The original proposals covered 4 phases set around new urban wetlands and a village green complete with cricket pitch and with buildings of a range of heights organised to create preferential microclimates isolated from the cold River Thames winds. Originally set at 1377 new homes including a range of houses, apartments and live /work units the project also includes a school and health centre, new commercial and live/work spaces and a variety of community facilities. 

The scheme employs a number of what were at the time innovative firsts including the use of a detailed design code to govern the character of streets, spaces and buildings, a variety of MMC techniques including on site factory made and volumetric components, materials that sought to reduce embodied carbon, Community Heating systems powered by Combined Heat and Power plants, reuse of heavily contaminated brownfield land and shared courtyard gardens and traffic free spaces managed by a site based resident owned and controlled management company. 

Following the completion and success of the first phases of housing and as a result of the addition of a fifth area of land which formed a buffer to one of London’s protected and largest maritime based aggregates works extensive community engagement was undertaken with new residents and other local stakeholders to secure approval to increase the density of the development to just over 2,900 new homes alongside further community and commercial facilities.  

Once the density increase proposal was secured an international design competition was held to generate new ideas for urban living and to further test and refine the revised masterplan. The competition, won by a team led by Jestico and Whiles Architects retained key themes of the original masterplan and introduced both new housing forms and successfully dealt with high levels of noise associated with the adjoining aggregates processing site. 

The scheme is the recipient of a number of design related awards and is internationally recognised as an exemplar of brownfield urban redevelopment. 

Experience

While at Countryside:

• Advising on Land acquisition including deal structuring

• Strategic research

• Development vision and option assessment

• Planning including policy assessments

• Design briefing including for the international design competition

• Consultant procurement, evaluation and selection advice

• Development Strategy including delivery strategies and Project Execution Planning

• Design Management

• Development and Project Management

• Design review and evaluation

• Management and Stewardship