Olympia is a new cultural neighbourhood for London, designed by Heatherwick Studio and SPPARC.
For 140 years, this site has been a showcase for the arts and commerce. While carefully restoring the site’s heritage, the studio’s new scheme reimagines Olympia as a creativity-led district. Crowned with a curved glass canopy, an elevated public realm connects new theatre and music venues, hotels, offices, restaurants, a school and the historic exhibition halls.
Heatherwick studio developed the masterplan for this £1.3 billion project, as well as designing in detail selected buildings and its new rooftop route of streets, squares and gardens. Unusually for a project of this scale and complexity, the programme also had to ensure the site could remain open throughout construction.
Our starting point for the masterplan was the idea of public spirit. When it opened in 1886, Olympia aimed to bring the marvels of the day to Londoners. The studio’s designs have been guided by this same ethos of opening up Olympia to everyone.
The venue’s expansion over the decades had meant that its 14-acre site (the size of 8 football pitches) had become inaccessible to people without an event ticket. The first step to counter this was the creation of an underground logistics centre, which has allowed Olympia Way – an arrival point once clogged with lorries and Portacabins – to become an attractive pedestrian-first street.
From Olympia Way, visitors are welcomed up escalators and steps that rise between the exhibition halls. Here a new rooftop street gives sweeping views of the city. Surrounded by bars, restaurants and plant-filled terraces, this social space is covered by a glazed canopy – a barrel-vaulted structure that echoes the roofs of the Grade II*- and Grade II-listed Grand and National Halls. The canopy’s 520 glass panels fan outwards, beckoning the public upwards, while sitting lightly within the historic architecture.
Rather than mimic Olympia’s Victorian design, the new buildings are inspired by its soulful qualities of light, depth, texture and rhythm. The pleated glass pattern of the Great Hall’s roof is a motif reflected in the canopy as well as the exteriors of the British Airways Theatre, citizenM hotel and Olympia Central offices – buildings whose design was led by Heatherwick Studio. You can also find its zigzag presence in the human-scale details the studio has crafted, like the wooden handrails.
The highest structure, Olympia Central’s 550,000 sq ft of office space, benefits from stepped architecture. That reduces the building’s visual impact from street level, as well as creating a series of large outdoor terraces – up to about 100m in length – which have spectacular vistas.
At five storeys high and with 1,575 seats, the British Airways Theatre is the largest new purpose-built theatre in London in 50 years. Its entrance façade of glass appears almost like stage curtains pulled apart. Elsewhere across Olympia, you discover the British Airways ARC music venue, the Wetherby Pembridge school and the Hyatt Regency hotel, new structures for which SPPARC was the lead architect.
With its buildings opening in stages across 2026 and 2027, this new cultural district has a projected footfall of 10 million people every year. It’s a place where both culture and community can thrive.
