Bermondsey Square

This 20,000m² mixed-use development is located just to the south of Tower Bridge on the site of an ancient abbey. The location has been home to Bermondsey market for many years and the project included the development of the public realm around the principal buildings to provide a new location for the market which operates two days a week.

The program for the project included a four-star hotel with 100 rooms, retail and food outlets at street level around the square, including a mini supermarket, some 4000 m² of commercial office space and 80 high-quality market sale apartments. A further 40 affordable apartment units are located in an adjacent block.

Originally conceived by developer Urban Catalyst, the project was delivered by Igloo Regeneration in a single phase that was completed in 2008. The project had exceptional environmental ambitions from the outset and Igloo received the “Sustainable Client of the Year” prize at the UK-GBC/Building Awards in 2009 for their role in this project.

Atelier Ten took on the full range of environmental design services for this project including full building services engineering for all of the buildings, energy analysis, lighting design, BREEAM and eco-homes assessment and administration, daylighting analysis and facade optimisation. The building has a community heating system comprising high-performance boilers and a small-scale CHP unit which generates the heat and hot water for all parts of the development. Metered supplies are provided to apartments and office areas and a centralised computerised billing system allows the management company to charge owners and tenants appropriately.

The office building has a high performance facade facing to the south including retractable blinds to allow occupants to control solar gain. The cooling and ventilation system for the offices uses a combination of exposed thermal mass and underfloor air distribution fed from a central ventilation plant which incorporates a high performance heat recovery for the winter and an adiabatic (indirect evaporative) cooling system to provide cooling to incoming fresh air in the summer months.