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Shaping Southwark: what makes it so special With its central, riverfront location, excellent transport links, strong history and communities, some of the UK’s finest cultural attractions and a local authority driving a £4 billion regeneration programme, the London Borough of Southwark is arguably the most exciting development location in the country. And its world-famous cultural attractions are a crucial element of the mix. It’s home to Tate Modern, Shakespeare’s Globe, Peckham Library and Borough Market as well as many other museums, theatres and arts organisations. Stretching southwards from the bank of the Thames to East Dulwich, it boasts some of the country’s most ambitious regeneration schemes – Elephant and Castle, Bermondsey Spa, the Aylesbury Estate and Canada Water – that are transforming entire areas and thousands of lives. All this means the borough is also home to many new and planned
Southwark Issue Six
landmark schemes from private investors excited by the opportunities on offer: the 280,000sq m More London, that has created a new business quarter on former wasteland; Sellar Properties’ forthcoming London Bridge Tower, to be among Europe’s tallest and most striking; Will Alsop’s Palestra building, now open for business; the new Architecture Foundation HQ, marking the first Zaha Hadid designed building in the capital; and the £500 million of mixed-use schemes springing up at Elephant and Castle. Southwark wasn’t always brimming with such promise, as the very institutions that put it on the map acknowledge. “The northern part of the borough was an area of very considerable deprivation and neglect,” says Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate. “When we first suggested making Bankside power station, as it was then, into a great museum of modern art everyone said ‘where is it?’.” But now, with almost four million visitors, that iconic chimney marks one of the most visited sites in the country (see page 40 for more on plans for the gallery). It’s a similar story along at the Globe, which opened in 1997. “This is actually where Shakespeare’s original theatre was – right beside the river, opposite St Paul’s Cathedral,” explains the