High-level hotel
Hotel and mixed-use on Victorian viaduct, Waterloo, London
This site, high above street level on the huge viaduct leading into Waterloo Station was once the platforms of the London Necropolis Railway, which was operational nearby and then here from 1854 to 1941, when it was bombed into disuse during the worst bombing raid of the war. The railway took the dead, which were stored in the arches below, and their mourners to Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey.
Underused since, occupied only by temporary shed structures, Network rail asked USM with SCABAL to propose an alternative future for this amazing place. Through the construction of mixed-use, hotel / residential / sports accommodation, made from sea containers, repurposed and fitted out to be pieced together on site, the disused station could be quickly brought into life as a spectacular new development in the heart of London without disruption to one of the busiest railway termini in the world and without major reconstruction of the Victorian brick-built viaduct and arches below. Access to the upper level could be provided by extending the project onto a disused adjacent ground-level site occupying a prominent corner opposite Lambeth tube station.
Service: Feasibility Study
Location: Waterloo, London
Client: Network rail, USM
Cost: Undisclosed
Areas: XXm2
Dates: XX
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