There is yet another reason to walk up the seven flights of stairs of a defunct car park in Peckham. The latest architectural commission by its highly-acclaimed resident cultural body is revealed. This time, Bold Tendencies has tasked young practice Cooke Fawcett Architects with creating a big viewing platform and kiosk up one end of the top, open-air floor of the car park.
Called the Peckham Observatory, the 3.5m-wide platform of hardwood timber decking attached to a locally-made steel structure is accessed by steps and a bleacher seating system.
At 3.5m above the car park, visitors have increased views on to sunsets over central London and on to Bold Tendencies’ other al fresco delights: Practice Architecture’s crowd-pleasing Frank’s Café, the Derek Jarman corner garden, and installations by artists including Isaac Olvera and Richard Wentworth.
The rooftop carpark is an attraction for Londoners
As well as adding aesthetically to a quieter end of the site, the platform has a functional role to play. It shelters concert-goers when they collect their tickets from the kiosk, positioned beneath it. The architects Oliver Cooke and Francis Fawcett have painted this simple, timber-framed box dark blue, to complement the green paint of the steelwork. This palette in turn contrasts with artist Simon Whybray’s nearby pink staircases – another Bold Tendencies commission.
Fawcett and Cooke founded their eponymous London firm in 2015, having worked together at Stirling Prize-winning outfit Herzog & de Meuron. This Bold Tendencies commission follows their acoustic Concert Wall for The Multi-Story Orchestra, which has a summer-long residency on a lower level of the car park.
This is the 11th year that Bold Tendencies’ Hannah Barry has amassed site-specific cultural events here. She is now considering commissioning an architecture piece for the car park’s lower levels, to make more of those areas. ‘We are interested in the ways people gather together,’ she says.
The observatory is located on the roof of a multi-storey car park in Peckham, London. Photography: Peter Landers
Cooke Fawcett Architects also designed a concert wall for an orchestra to play in front of. Photography: Peter Landers
The concert wall is located within the multi-storey car park. Photography: Peter Landers
Frank’s Café is designed by Practice Architecture. Photography: Richard Bryant
The red canopy of Frank’s, which opens in London during the summer months. Photography: Richard Bryant
Architectural details of Practice Architecture’s Frank’s pavilion and structure. Photography: Richard Bryant
The warm interiors of Practice Architecture's Straw Auditorium where performances and events take place. Photography: Damian Griffiths
The exterior of the Straw Auditorium, built on the eighth floor of the multi-storey carpark. Photography: Damian Griffiths
INFORMATION
For more information, visit the Bold Tendencies website and the Cooke Fawcett Architects website
ADDRESS
Bold Tendencies
95a Rye Lane
London SE15 4TG
-
Lind Canvas is a new electric surfboard extending surf beyond the waveSwedish minimalism meets California cool with Lind’s new electric surfboard, promising the feeling of a never-ending wave. Wallpaper* heads to the Swedish archipelago to try it out
-
A guide to modernism’s most influential architectsFrom Bauhaus and brutalism to California and midcentury, these are the architects who shaped modernist architecture in the 20th century
-
‘Changing Fashion’: a new exhibition explores how photographer David Bailey reshaped style‘David Bailey’s Changing Fashion’ at the Marta Ortega Pérez (MOP) Foundation in A Coruña, Spain is a wide-ranging retrospective of the British photographer’s fashion oeuvre. Here, his son Fenton Bailey tells Wallpaper* more
-
Shard Place offers residents the chance to live in the shadow of London’s tallest buildingThe 27-storey tower from Renzo Piano Building Workshop joins The Shard and The News Building to complete Shard Quarter, providing a sophisticated setting for renters
-
Kengo Kuma’s ‘Paper Clouds’ in London is a ‘poem’ celebrating washi paper in construction‘Paper Clouds’, an installation by Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, is a poetic design that furthers research into the use of washi paper in construction
-
Foster + Partners to design the national memorial to Queen Elizabeth IIFor the Queen Elizabeth II memorial, Foster + Partners designs proposal includes a new bridge, gates, gardens and figurative sculptures in St James’ Park
-
Wolves Lane Centre brings greenery, growing and grass roots togetherWolves Lane Centre, a new, green community hub in north London by Material Cultures and Studio Gil, brings to the fore natural materials and a spirit of togetherness
-
A new London exhibition explores the legacy of Centre Pompidou architect Richard Rogers‘Richard Rogers: Talking Buildings’ – opening tomorrow at Sir John Soane’s Museum – examines Rogers’ high-tech icons, which proposed a democratic future for architecture
-
At the Royal Academy summer show, architecture and art combine as never beforeThe Royal Academy summer show is about to open in London; we toured the iconic annual exhibition and spoke to its curator for architecture, Farshid Moussavi
-
This ingenious London office expansion was built in an on-site workshopNew Wave London and Thomas-McBrien Architects make a splash with this glulam extension built in the very studio it sought to transform. Here's how they did it
-
Once vacant, London's grand department stores are getting a new lease on lifeThanks to imaginative redevelopment, these historic landmarks are being reborn as residences, offices, gyms and restaurants. Here's what's behind the trend
