New London Architecture

White City Place

Built

White City Place provides a cluster of workspace buildings united by new public realm. The campus has quickly become a busy new centre for the creative, technology and life science sectors.

White City Place - Gateway East is one of three buildings comprising the Gateway site at White City Place. In addition to the building, two new public squares, streets and a garden.

“Stanhope is the developer and asset-manager of White City Place. Over the last four years, we have learned some big lessons about the life science sector, and it is what has helped us lease over 120,000 sq ft of space to eight life sciences companies, including giant Novartis.
Our biggest learning is that, to be successful in the life sciences sector, developers need to truly understand it, its ecosystem, and what companies need in order to succeed in their crucial work of discovery.
Making sure you understand the intricacies of what your occupiers do and providing the right wraparound services and back-of-house provisions to enable their day-to-day work will make a massive difference to them, and therefore to the success of your scheme.
For start-ups and scale-ups, their space has a bigger role to play than just a roof over their heads, and that can only be fulfilled through asset management. Providing life sciences companies with the right support could be the difference between those who succeed and those who don’t.
Life sciences is a relatively new sector and the race for talent is truly an international one. With jobs that very often need to be done on-site, offices have a major role to play in helping companies attract the talent they need.
As well as offering state-of-the-art facilities and modern communal spaces, what surrounds the actual building can be make or break. Anyone relocating from another country, or an in-demand British graduate courted by companies abroad, would much rather be located somewhere offering leisure options, gyms, restaurants, cafes, bars, and places encouraging chance encounters, than in a sanitised office development.”

Claire Dawe, Head of Asset Management, Stanhope PLC

This building is one of three buildings comprising the Gateway site at White City Place. White City Place provides a cluster of workspace buildings united by new public realm. In addition to the building, two new public squares, streets and a garden are part of the project. The design ensures the building can be adapted to incorporate the needs of life sciences requirements and can accommodate a standard office layout with flexibility to add labs if required by the tenants. The Gateway East’s tower sits on a podium that defines the street edge and is activated through A1 and A3 retail.
Knowledge Networks: London and the Ox-Cam Arc

Knowledge Networks: London and the Ox-Cam Arc

In 2015, Stanhope, Mitsui Fudosan and AIMCo acquired Media Village in White City from the BBC, close to Television Centre, adding to their long-term commitment and investment in the area. Establishing strategic connections between these two developments, Stanhope worked closely with several major landowners including Imperial College London, Westfield London and Berkeley St James, to implement a shared vision for White City including up to 5,000 high quality homes, over 2m sq ft of offices, new public spaces, an enhanced world-class shopping offer and a hub for academia, innovation and start-ups.

 Following Imperial College’s expansion in White City, including the Molecular Sciences Research Hub and The Sir Michael Uren Biomedical Engineering Research Hub, a concentration of life sciences innovators has formed. Being next to Imperial meant that White City Place was ideally situated to provide accommodation for life science businesses who were drawn to this emerging knowledge cluster.

White City Place comprises six workspace buildings of c.1m sq ft united by new public realm and street level retail. The development included the refurbishment and repositioning of three existing buildings to transform them into modern working environments: WestWorks, MediaWorks and the Garden House. Having inherited former BBC buildings with greater ceiling heights than standard offices, Stanhope were able to provide both office and wet and dry laboratories as required by life science occupiers. Large floor plates and communications infrastructure certified by Wired as best-in-class ensure the buildings will remain resilient and adaptable to future technologies. As well as meeting infrastructure needs, a high quality events and enlivenment programme has been critical in attracting commercial tenants and helped to establish White City as a destination in its own right.

 The rapidly growing life science companies housed at White City Place include Autolus, a biopharmaceutical company developing next-generation therapies for cancer treatment, spun out of UCL. Comprised of a handful of employees when it started in 2016, it now occupies c. 33,000 sq ft, in MediaWorks (with expansion room if required), has c. 400 staff and has raised over $400m in funding for research and testing. White City Place is also home to spin-out companies Gamma Delta and Synthace.

Pharmaceutical giant Novartis have taken 53,000 sq ft. Its UK Country President, Haseeb Ahmad noted that 'White City is quickly becoming one of the UK’s life sciences and technology districts, and the ethos of The WestWorks campus complements how we work to deliver on our strategy to reimagine medicine.' In addition to health and life science occupiers, the campus is home to over 3,000 staff from the BBC, research and teaching facilities for the Royal College of Art, fashion occupiers YOOX Net a Porter and Li & Fung, creative co-working Huckletree, Jellycat London, Arts Alliance Media and ITV Studios.

Stanhope have secured planning permission for an additional three new buildings comprising c.1m sq ft of business accommodation at the gateway to the site, part of which has been pre-let to L'Oréal UK and Ireland.

 ‘What we noted about global knowledge networks is how common the physical characteristics are that underpin their success: urban locale with good transport and social infrastructure; the anchoring of a cluster of sites around leading research institutions; buildings and infrastructure that enable businesses across the full spectrum from startups through to large scale enterprises, to co-locate, evolve, and interact. White City is a paradigm of this model, growing at a rapid pace, and at a time when the cross-fertilisation of health, the sciences, engineering and tech are working together to face global issues.’
 David Height, Director of Planning and Engineering, Mitsui Fudosan UK Ltd

Project information

Status

Built

Borough

Hammersmith

Size

185806 sq m

Completion

2017


Location

Wood Lane, London W12 7SL, UK


Team Credits

Developer

Stanhope

Client

Mitsui Fudosan (UK) Ltd

Client

AIMCo

Architect

Allies and Morrison

Construction Manager

Lendlease


Listed by

Stanhope PLC

Last updated on

31/05/2024


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