On the southeast shore of the River Thames, London’s youngest neighborhood is rising around the yellow support towers of the Millennium Dome. And within it is a new resource for the design community. Low-slung and architecturally varied, the Design District will dedicate an entire city block in Greenwich Peninsula to creative workspaces where affordable rent is a guiding principle. Master-planned by architect Hannah Corlett of HNNA, the district includes 16 buildings designed by eight different architects, and stands out as a low-density destination amid its future neighbors, a swath of residential towers.

An aerial rendering of the future Design District, located just south of the O2 in London.

The Design District, says Corlett, is intended to be a juxtaposition. “We wanted not to design into the existing grain [of Greenwich Peninsula] but to design in contrast to it,” explains the architect, who also master-planned the greater neighborhood for developer Knight Dragon. With a view corridor stipulation that bans obstruction of the towers of the Richard Rogers–designed Dome (now called the O2), it proved more advantageous to build low on a site adjacent to it. So the team capped building heights at four stories, and called upon eight architects to design two structures each, both in the round. In addition to Corlett herself, 6a Architects, Adam Khan Architects, Architecture 00, Barozzi Veiga, David Kohn Architects, Mole Architects, and SelgasCano have designed buildings within the District, while landscape firm Schulze+Grassov was tapped to weave the site together with plazas and gardens. When the District opens later this year (COVID-19 could push this date back), it will achieve “a domestic scale, dense, medina-like, woven piece of city,” says Corlett, and what London currently lacks: a purpose-built design district, by creatives and for creatives.

Signage atop a building by David Kohn Architects with a red brick base and glazed grid facade.

This is not to say that London lacks artists’ and makers’ studios entirely: Coworking spaces like Second Home, designed by Spanish architecture firm SelgasCano and Makerversity in the basement of Somerset House served as precedents for the Design District plan. But, explains District director Helen Arvanitakis, “the London design community has been particularly squeezed by a combination of rising rents and change of use” because many designers’ workspaces are within repurposed industrial buildings. “These problems have been driven by the creative industries’ own successes: People want to live and work around creative people, so the demand drives developers to price creatives out.”

A building with an Op Art–inspired facade by Adam Khan Architects.

The advantage, then, of creating purpose-built studios in an entirely new neighborhood is avoiding displacement of creative occupants. Their continued presence has been built into the greater luxury context of Greenwich Peninsula by its own developers. In addition, Design District workspaces will be leased out on a blended rents model, allowing variation in the size, scale, and types of creative businesses that will occupy them (at time of publication, no tenants had been signed). The hope is that because they can afford to stay, they will.

A serpentine food hall by SelgasCano is central to intriguing passersby at the future Design District in London.

Part of ensuring the long-term affordability of the workspaces lay in the construction of the buildings themselves. Though each architect had free rein on shape and materials, any innovation was required to align with a strict budget (and a prescribed location for the circulation and mechanical core). Perhaps surprisingly, this constraint led many of the project’s architects to embrace sustainable, high-performance materials for their facades (a large part of any building’s budget), says Corlett. And with each structure designed in the round and each architect designing in isolation, variety is the spice of this city block. SelgasCano’s transparent market hall snakes through a courtyard formed by London-based 6a Architects’ harlequin-patterned building, HNNA’s undulating white structure, and a corten steel–faced ziggurat by Cambridge–based Mole Architects.

Inside the food hall by SelgasCano.

Perhaps, then, the most difficult job went to the landscape firm who devised a literal common ground on the eclectic site. “Good urban design considers how people, buildings, and open spaces relate to each other,” says Oliver Schulze, founding partner of Schulze+Grassov in a statement. “Rather than forcing context and conformity upon its buildings, the Design District liberates them—it has a built-in eclecticism that is distinctly British. The open spaces are the glue that holds the district together, connecting buildings and encouraging interaction between businesses.”

Between each building are plazas and green spaces.

Aside from the market hall, the program for the Design District is mostly workspace, flexible enough to be eventually outfitted to suit any creative tenant’s needs, from an open-plan start-up office to a woodworking studio. Between the 16 buildings, there are workspaces for more than 1,800 artists, designers, or makers. Rather than dedicate the ground level to a grand lobby as in a traditional office building, the architects were encouraged to design workspaces on all floors, inviting artists to engage directly with their city and vice versa. Here will be mostly workshops due to the heavy nature of their required equipment. And on top of some buildings are landscaped rooftops, advantageous for both tenants and neighbors looking down onto the site from the surrounding residential towers.

Corten steel clads a building by Mole Architects.

Prior to London’s construction pause due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Design District was slated to open in September, and its developers are still aiming for a 2020 opening date. However, in this former industrial neighborhood, changes are already visible. Last year, AD100 architecture firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro opened the first phase of an elevated riverside park , located on just the other side of the O2. And homes inside the residential towers are currently for sale.

A timber staircase inside an in-progress building by Mole Architects.

During her initial research for the Design District masterplan, Corlett discovered that artists studios cannot exist within a one-size-fits-all design solution. So she sought to create something that she didn’t see in the existing market: “Realizing that actually everybody needs very different space, the project focus became creating a palette of very different spaces.” The best method to achieve that variety was to pitch designers who “understand that the types of shapes, the volumes, the orientation, the amount of glazing, the types of structure fit different people.” When completed, the project will be a purposeful disarray of individual architects’ visions. And, Knight Dragon hopes, if you build it, the artists will come.