The
Music Centre at White City - site history
The
site has a history of large-scale development. In 1908 the White
City site was developed for the Franco-English exhibition where
the name White City originated.
These
buildings were subsequently used for other international expositions.
The site hosted the 1908 Olympic Games and later the stadium was
used as a dog racing and athletics venue up until the 1980s.
Now
the wider area is shared with the residents of the adjacent White
City Estate and the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s Television Centre.
The
daily population of this large ´óÏó´«Ã½ campus is about 12,000 people.
The
Music Centre will sit at the centre of this campus, at the heart
of the ´óÏó´«Ã½ in West London.
The
´óÏó´«Ã½ acquired the site in the mid-1980s and for the first phase of
the development a 25,000 square metres net office building was completed
in 1990.
The
major redevelopment of the site results from a design competition
held in 2000 when the ´óÏó´«Ã½ appointed Allies & Morrison to develop
designs for a master plan for the site.
This
consists of a group of up to nine new buildings which combined with
Phase 1 will form a publicly accessible urban environment.
Five
of these buildings are currently being completed:
•
Broadcast Centre of 25,400 sq m net – used to house the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s
TV playout business.
•
Media Centre of 22,400 sq m net – a new office building for
the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s New Media and Technology Operations, Marketing and Communications,
Nations and Regions and Corporate Offices.
•
Energy Centre, capable of servicing the entire site.
•
Two Perimeter Buildings, facing onto South Africa Road for subletting
to other media companies.
The work is
due for completion in late 2003.
The final phase
of developing the 17 acres of land is the Music Centre and the spaces
which will be accessible to the public.
One
way of encouraging the local community and ´óÏó´«Ã½ staff to engage with
the site is through the public art programme.
The
art, which includes both temporary and permanent exhibitions, is
designed to sit within the architecture and gives visual expression
to the creativity housed within the ´óÏó´«Ã½.
For
example, Tim Head and Yuko Shiraishi have worked with architects
Allies & Morrison on permanent light and colour interventions
built into the fabric of the building.
Andrew
Motion, the poet laureate, has created a work on broadcasting that
will be inscribed into the 92 metre landscaped approach to the main
entrance of the new building.
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