Food market and hotel to open on Victorian site in phases from 2028
Heatherwick Studio has taken over Stanton Williams on the redevelopment of part of the West Smithfield site in the City of London.
Thomas Heatherwick’s practice will lead the transformation of a group of historic market buildings known as the Annexe into a food market and a hotel.
Stanton Williams has been working with the City of London on the wider Smithfield site for several years and advised the authority on the appointment of a developer for the site as recently as this year.
The City announced this week it had formed a partnership with General Projects Limited and Sir Lloyd Dorfman’s Esselco Group Limited for the Annexe.
It is understood that the City is looking to take the site in a different direction to the plans outlined by Stanton Williams due to the evolving context of the site.
Stanton Williams is still working with the City on Smithfield’s General Market, which is set to open as the first phase of the new Museum of London later this year, and the Poultry Market, which will open as the second phase of the museum in 2028.
The new plans for the Annexe will open in two phases, with the food market set to open in 2028 and a boutique hotel, ground floor retail and a pocket park to open two years later in 2030.
Stanton William’s work on the Annexe included the conservation of the site’s Victorian exterior and a feasibility study to assess what uses the structure could accommodate.
A spokesperson for the practice said: “The City has subsequently engaged with a number of developers in order to provide proposals for the Annexe site, a process which we also assisted with.
“We wish General Projects and Esselco Group, working with Heatherwick Studio, every success as they take this exciting scheme forward.”
Heatherwick Studio partner and group leader Eliot Postma said: “West Smithfield Annexe has always been a place of making, exchange and public life, so it’s a real privilege for us to be involved in imagining its future.
“This is a project rooted in London’s heritage but looking firmly forward. We’re excited about what it could become.”
City of London policy chairman Chris Hayward added: “Smithfield has always been London’s kitchen, a place of trade, energy and life for over a thousand years. The Annexe redevelopment honours that history while giving this remarkable corner of the Square Mile a bold new future.
“Alongside the new London Museum and the Barbican, it will help make Smithfield somewhere Londoners and visitors come back to again and again not for one particular reason, but because there is always something extraordinary to discover.”
No comments yet