South Kensington Underground Station
South Kensington Underground Station
For over seven years, we provided heritage advice to ultimately help secure Listed Building Consent and planning permission for a major mixed-use redevelopment centred on the Grade II listed South Kensington Underground Station.
Our initial work involved researching the station and its surrounding context to understand its evolution, assess its historic significance and identify opportunities for the sympathetic and appropriate development within and around the station. Our client, TfL and Native Land, sought to work with the local authority to provide a development brief to guide future development around the station, written to an adoptable standard by the local authority Royal Borough of Kensington Chelsea. TfL also sought to use the information to guide the design of interventions to upgrade the station to increase its capacity and to support subsequent listed building consents where necessary.
The architect’s proposals are a complex mix of new build, refurbishment of existing buildings and façade retention. Our role was to continually assess the scheme’s impact upon the historic buildings within the Site as well as the many highly-graded heritage assets in the immediate vicinity of the station, as part of the iterative design process. We produced a Heritage Statement to accompany the full planning and Listed Building Consent applications for the development, and facilitated consultations with the local authority and Historic England. The proposals - ultimately approved in December 2023 after an inquiry - will introduce high-quality, contemporary architecture into the area around South Kensington Underground Station whilst preserving the significance and setting of the many nearby heritage assets and the historic streetscape. The station itself, one of the busiest on the network, will benefit from transformative step-free access and will be a fitting centrepiece to the new mixed-use development.
Client: Transport for London (TfL) and Native Land
Architect: RSHP