The Outernet
Creating a new cultural ecosystem on one of London’s busiest interchanges
“This is the most epic space for storytelling I’ve ever seen.” Ridley Scott The Standard, 4th November 2024
Ultrapractical impact The Outernet is architecture in its broadest form, for a client whose idea of value is measured not in pounds per square metre, but in footfall and pixel size, in virtual communities and emotional engagement. It’s the first completed part of a global project (by the Outernet company) to create city-centre entertainment districts using technology to connect music, art, film, gaming and retail.
Dusk at Outernet: as night falls, passers by are drawn in by the bright lights.
The digital screens are a blank canvas for experiments in immersive content.
The Now Building has become a free public gallery.
The screens display both commercial and artistic content, and are the stage for live events and brand launches.
Culture and complexity Designed and built over 13 years, The Outernet has a deep-rooted history, and a vision firmly fixed on the future. It brings together an unusually wide range of cultural uses and resolves numerous technical challenges, cantilevered over a Northern Line escalator box and sitting above the Elizabeth Line. It also deals with a broad range of building types, from civic new-build through to the sensitive restoration of centuries-old structures.
Site plan: the immediate area has been incrementally urbanised from the beginning of the nineteenth century.
3D studies show the proximity of below-ground infrastructure.
New-build elements are cantilevered off the main structure to accommodate the Northern Line escalator box.
Site section
Growing from grassroots The ecosystem grows from a grassroots venue, pro-bono recording studio and music shops in refurbished seventeenth-century structures on Denmark Street, London’s original Tin Pan Alley. Hotel rooms and apartments for performers and fans are dispersed across the upper levels along with offices for lawyers and journalists also in the business. A much larger venue – Here – for up to 2,000 people, a blank-canvas black-box volume, is hidden below ground.
Over the decades Denmark Street became synonymous with popular music.
Tin Pin Alley, as it became known, was a centre for recording music and socialising.
The spirit of Denmark Street is preserved at The Lower Third, an intimate grassroots venue.
The music ecosystem is now protected by a new Tin Pan Alley use class, prioritising music businesses.
The new use class means music retail, publishing and performance spaces will continue to thrive.
Technology is a building material Tech is fundamental in building this new cultural community. A sequence of immersive multimedia spaces – up to four storeys tall – open onto Tottenham Court Road, clad internally with super high-resolution digital screens and wrapped in kinetic facades that can open or close to the plaza outside. A sandwich of offices and restaurants sits above. They have become one of the London’s most visited attractions, showing commercial, creative and community-based digital art.
The largest immersive space is four storeys tall.
Kinetic facades open or close to the plaza according to the installation.
Physical model showing the cantilevered facade.
Location
London
Client
Consolidated Group
Date
2022