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It was the largest clear-span enclosed space in Britain, with a sweeping glass roof that embodied a confident new aesthetic – as did St Pancras station and what is now the Business Design Centre in Islington.Īccording to Chris Miele, an architectural historian and consultant who worked on Olympia’s redesign, how and when the complex was named “Olympia” is lost to time. The Grand Hall was built in 1886 by the National Agricultural Hall Company, as an ingenious way to add awe and excitement to exhibitions. But Olympia’s history, at least, is coherent, in that it has always been a commercial showcase. Heatherwick and co have inherited an incoherent, dilapidated site that includes four listed buildings and one listed façade. But it has to make its real estate work harder.” You can’t rip them down – when you polish the patina, London gives character that’s hard to replicate. “If you look at the world’s big cities, very few can say they have continuous use of buildings going back 1,000 years. “We’re going for ‘Long London’,” says Lloyd Lee, managing partner at developers Yoo Capital. He says that the Design Museum is already in talks with Olympia about partnerships.

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“He knows how to straddle the commercial and cultural worlds.” Marlow argues that creative clusters in cities are essential for building momentum, particularly after a period when the Government has failed to prioritise the arts. “Thomas knows how to make a destination.” says Tim Marlow, director of the Design Museum, Olympia’s near-neighbour. He talks with commitment about introducing “soulfulness” and “emotion” to places – but can he replicate these successes with a complex that, when finished, will be bigger than London’s South Bank? Take the former Victorian coal yards in London’s King’s Cross, for example, which he reimagined as Coal Drops Yard, a lively shopping-and-dining extravaganza or Little Island Park, a whimsical island standing on 132 concrete columns in the Hudson in New York. Critics say his work is impractical, pointing to London’s failed Garden Bridge project, which was backed by then-mayor Boris Johnson and on which Heatherwick was chief designer, and the Vessel, a kooky, 16-storey ornamental tower in Manhattan, also designed by Heatherwick and now closed indefinitely after several suicides.īut Heatherwick also has a knack for designing popular places. Heatherwick is a heterodox figure: a multi-award-winning designer, but not a trained architect (though architects work in his studio). All that will be added to three existing exhibition halls, and the first phase is scheduled to open in 2025. The new Olympia will sprawl over 14 acres, including a new 1,525-seat theatre and 4,000+ capacity music venue a creative-arts school for 450 children offices, gardens, a public plaza, two vast luxury hotels and countless restaurants. Thomas Heatherwick Studios and Spparc are co-leading the redevelopment they promise it will become “a British-made stage for global talent – a new cultural landmark”. It was beautiful, in its way, but it wasn’t welcoming.”īut the exhibition centre is now being given a £1.3bn overhaul. “One moment it was all about cats, then about carpets – a world of people wearing plastic badges. “There has always been a confusion to Olympia,” agrees the designer Thomas Heatherwick.

“Partly because it was so disconnected from the surrounding area.”

“The people’s palace that was envisaged by the Victorians never materialised,” says Trevor Morriss, director of the architectural practice Spparc. Its Victorian façade was usually shrouded in hoardings or hidden behind lorries, doing little to encourage visitors to linger. This outsized Victorian relic, looming over a dusty artery where Kensington meets Hammersmith, had long offered a jumble of niche-interest shows (“Horse of the Year”, “Ideal Home”), trade events (“Cyber Expo”) and the occasional, underwhelming gig. For decades, Olympia was London’s misfit.