Riverside enterprise in Greenwich
By Tom Howells
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If you had played a little ‘North Greenwich’ word association five years ago, the responses would likely have riffed on ‘barren wasteland’, ‘the O₂’ and little else. That’s changed, emphatically, with the development of Greenwich Peninsula – a groundbreaking design and creative community in the making, with more than 17,000 homes and 48 acres of open public space due to emerge in the coming years.
The Design District is its beating heart: a permanent hub (that also serves as one of LDF’s temporary Design Districts) of creative workspaces within 14 eclectic buildings by firms as cosmopolitan as 6a, SelgasCano and David Kohn.
It’s all bolstered by The Tide – an elevated riverside park by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, dotted with public works by Studio Morison, Marwan Kaabour, Ian Davenport, Allen Jones, Morag Myerscough and more. Launched in 2021, the Design District (and the Peninsula at large) can make an effusive claim to be one of London’s pre-eminent creative areas – a notion only cemented by its annual LDF events.
Broaching the area’s industrial past and contemporary ethos, the artist-architect duo John Booth and CAN present ‘Up in Smoke’ at the NOW Gallery, the space overhauled into an eye-popping installation delving deep into the Peninsula’s history by reimagining its towering chimneys. The appeal is broad: Booth’s hand-painted, multicoloured constructs evoke everything from Boord Street's robust stacks to the slimline vents of the later gasworks, while also harnessing a quietly winsome appeal with their childlike reimagining of the urban skyline.
Down by the water, the designer Kitty Joseph’s prismatic, ethereal installation ‘Chromatic River Walk’ sees the riverside strewn with billowing organza-fabric flags on bamboo poles and recycled reflective vinyl, all imagined in thrall to the ebb and flow of the Thames. She will lead an early evening drawing session on Thursday 19 September, encouraging attendees to put pastel and pencil to paper and immerse themselves in the Peninsula’s expansive cloudscape and her own intervention on the shore.
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The self-starting, meanwhile, can pick up an Art Trail map from the NOW Gallery and make their way past Joseph’s textiles, Anthony Gormley’s eldritch ‘Quantum Clouds’ and The Tide’s myriad works. On Wednesday 18 September, they can poke their heads into one of the Design District’s workshops to learn about residents’ varied practices in an open day dubbed ‘Your Route to Creativity’, featuring workshops with impresarios such as Helen Kirkum (who transforms waste into sneakers) and Anya Cluer of Bloom East (who will be hosting a dried-flower wreath-making workshop).
“It always feels like LDF marks our birthday as a Design District,” says Laura Flanagan, the marketing director for Knight Dragon/Greenwich Peninsula. “We took on the site 10 years ago; the first thing we did was open a gallery. I think that speaks to how much art, culture and creativity has always been a cornerstone of the Peninsula – to build an ecosystem that allows people to come together.”
That sense of allegiance and community is palpable across Greenwich’s reinvigorated landscape, with the Peninsula a year-round beacon for creativity that only burns brighter during the Festival’s late-summer days.
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