"The Platform" is an observation of the impact of the economic model on urban growth. The series documents the transformation of the city after the 2008 financial crisis, providing a panoramic view of its current development state through a selection of strategic locations. Although scattered across the map, these places form a single emerging urban system. Perhaps that is why they are particularly revealing when it comes to explaining both the accelerated financialization of the city and the implications that this new mode of growth has on the lives of its inhabitants.

The work features a dozen sites that stand on the ruins of the modern city. These locations, such as the Canary Wharf financial center, built on the site of the old port, have continued to expand since Margaret Thatcher's government promoted their construction. Other sites include the neighborhood for young professionals and international students that replaced Elephant and Castle's Heygate Estate, one of the city's largest public housing complexes, demolished after a long period of social and architectural decline; or the iconic Battersea Power Station which has been converted into a luxurious mixed-use, housing Apple's new European headquarters.

These sites, born of a process of expulsion and historical erasure, reveal how the new paradigm of urban growth ignores elements that have traditionally united public space. The new metropolis appears as the by-product of finance capital setting their sights on the territory, reduced to a mere production platform. New housing developments, amassed by large investment groups, remain empty for most of the year. Meanwhile, due to the constant increase in housing prices, the population is forced to reside increasingly farther away from the centres of influence. As the urban sociologist Saskia Sassen has stated, the city grows as it empties.

La serie The Platform es una observación del impacto del modelo económico en el crecimiento urbano que documenta la transformación de la ciudad después de la crisis financiera de 2008, ofreciendo una vista panorámica de su estado de desarrollo a través de una selección de ubicaciones estratégicas. Aunque dispersos por el mapa, estos lugares forman un único sistema urbano emergente. Quizás por eso resultan especialmente reveladores a la hora de explicar tanto la acelerada financiarización de la ciudad como las implicaciones que este nuevo modo de crecimiento tiene en la vida de sus habitantes.

El trabajo recopila una docena de emplazamientos que se levantan sobre las ruinas de la urbe moderna. Lugares como el centro financiero de Canary Wharf que, erigido sobre los terrenos del antiguo puerto, no ha dejado de crecer desde que el gobierno de Margaret Thatcher impulsara su construcción; el barrio para young professionals e international students que sustituyó en Elephant & Castle al Heygate Estate, uno de los conjuntos de vivienda pública más grandes de la ciudad, demolido tras un largo proceso de degradación social y arquitectónica; o la icónica Estación Energética de Battersea, que convertida en un lujoso complejo de uso mixto alberga las nuevas oficinas europeas de Apple.

Nacidos de un proceso de expulsión y borrado histórico, estos sitios dan cuenta de cómo el nuevo paradigma de crecimiento urbano se caracteriza por ignorar los elementos que tradicionalmente habían cohesionado el espacio público. Reducida a mera plataforma de extracción, la nueva metrópolis aparece como el subproducto del capital financiero fijándose en el territorio. Los nuevos desarrollos, acumulados por grandes grupos de inversión, permanecen vacíos la mayor parte del año. Mientras, a causa del constante incremento del precio de la vivienda, la población se ve obligada a residir cada vez más lejos de los centros de influencia. Como ha expuesto la socióloga urbana Saskia Sassen 2, la ciudad crece vaciándose.

After decades of neglect and several failed attempts, the strip of land between the Chelsea and Vauxhall bridges is finally being regenerated. The former industrial site covers an area of 227 hectares along the south bank of the Thames, so close to sites such as Victoria Station and Westminster that the journey can be made on foot. It is a privileged location, in which in a few years around 20 major urban developments will be undertaken.

In 2008, the announcement of the transfer of the U.S. Embassy to a new building in Nine Elms was the starting signal for the conversion of the area. Shortly afterwards, in 2010, the start of the extension of the Northern Line¹ from Kennington to Battersea was an irresistible incentive for large international investors. Around 20,000 new homes have been planned in the area. The councils of Lambeth and Wadsworth have announced that 40% of the housing built by the developers should be affordable. The regulations do not, however, prevent the inhabitants of these houses from being forced to use so-called poor doors, auxiliary entrances designed to segregate the less advantaged residents, or from restricting their access to community services. Neither does the rule prevent affordable housing from being acquired by private investment groups. Agreed reductions in the affordable housing quota in exchange for financial contributions or the construction of infrastructures are also normal.

Among the most outstanding developments is Embassy Gardens, a new “diplomatic sector” promoted by the Irish company Ballymore and made up of 1,982 homes (already on the market, starting at £1,000,000), cafes, restaurants, business spaces, a health centre, sports facilities and a hotel with 100 rooms, which boasts an investment of £2.5 billion and the backing of two giants of the stature of Lazard and CBRE Group². Guangzhou R&F Properties, a Chinese real estate company, will invest £1 billion in the construction of two office buildings and two 52-storey towers with 558 apartments. The largest brick building in Europe, Battersea Power Station, will stand out in a sea of glass that after an investment of £1,583,000,000, will be converted by PNB and EPF, two of the largest investment groups in Malaysia, into a multi-use complex that will include offices, housing and a luxury shopping centre, and where Apple will establish its headquarters. All of this will be linked by a new linear park that will allow visitors and residents to walk along the riverbank from the old station to Tower Bridge.

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1. The Northern Line extension is a project budgeted at £1,000,000,000 that will provide a fast and direct connection to the City and King’s Cross, among other strategic locations.

2. The largest financial management and advisory company and the largest commercial real estate investment and services firm in the world respectively.

Of Celtic origin, paved in Roman times and travelled in the Middle Ages by pilgrims on their way to Canterbury, the Old Kent Road is now one of the main arteries in the south east of London. It is part of the A2, the road that connects the centre of the capital with the port of Dover and the maritime trade routes from Europe. In the early nineteenth century the upper and middle classes, driven away by early industrialization, abandoned their homes in the vicinity of the old country road. Industry then led to an abundant influx of working families that made the areas around the old road one of the most densely populated points in the city. After the Second World War, even though most of the urban fabric survived the Nazi bombing, many of the nineteenth-century buildings were demolished and replaced by new social housing blocks to solve the shortage of living space.


On the east side of the road, in Bermondsey, the South Metropolitan Gasworks had been producing gas since 1833 to supply many of the nearby towns from Southwark to Croydon; from 1811 to 1970, the Surrey Grand Canal crossed the roadway, enabling transport and the rapid distribution of building materials and other goods from Rotherhithe to the towns of Peckham and Camberwell; in the west, in 1951 the London Essences Company installed a soap and perfume processing plant on the ruins of the former Robert White and Sons Ltd. lemonade and ginger beer factory. In the 1960s the neighbourhood was a refuge for the Richardson Gang, a violent and notorious criminal gang whose role was crucial in the construction of the black legend. David Bowie, for example, used a room on the second floor of the Thomas A. Becket Public House to rehearse when he was recording “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust”, in the same place where European and Commonwealth heavyweight champion Sir Henry Cooper trained daily for fifteen years. It closed down in 2015 and has been on the market since then. A good example of the depression the street has suffered is the thirty-nine pubs that have closed since the late 1980s. Industrial activity, except for a number of small, scattered workshops, has completely disappeared.

Although the street is located in the city’s metropolitan area, Southwark Council never thought it would be suitable to become an attractive centre. The area has suffered the consequences of poor organization, aggravated by a lack of planning and the construction of large commercial parks, more typical of outlying areas than of urban centres, scattered along its long wide route. However, on what has so far been the cheapest street on the Monopoly board, three new tube stations are now being planned. After three public consultations, Transport for London has closed the route in order to extend the Bakerloo Line. The first phase will involve five stops from Elephant & Castle to Lewisham, three of which will be on the street and one at New Cross Gate, next to Goldsmith’s University. Although the work will not be completed until 2028, the prospects for growth are already apparent. The Southwark Council has already prepared a Master Plan for the regeneration of the Opportunity Area, which foresees the construction of around 20,000 homes in the coming years. The new Old Kent Road is underway: the developer Avanton has already undertaken the construction of the Ruby Triangle, a set of residential and studio towers for entrepreneurs that will be built on the derelict industrial estate of the same name. The development will be subject to the 40% Affordable Housing quota that is mandatory for this part of the district. A new higher education college, primary and secondary schools and a health centre are currently being planned in anticipation of the potential growth to come. As a spur to the great future regeneration, the promoters have announced the integration of the new urban fabric by means of a green spine of linear parks. It was a good idea, but one which had already been thought out and delivered, thanks to the pressure of neighbourhood movements, by the Docklands Development Corporation in 1981, when the aforementioned Surrey Canal was converted into a park after a decade’s abandonment. Although the extension of these garden walks is included in the project, it is historically inaccurate to present it as a novelty brought about by the “radical ecological commitment” of the developers.

The manufacture of gas from coal and oil, which had served to supply the city with energy and work for two centuries, became obsolete when the existence of natural gas in the North Sea was confirmed. By the end of the 1990s, most of the gas-producing industry had ceased to operate. The Greenwich peninsula was home to some of the largest and most productive facilities in the world, so its closure meant that a vast amount of land was left unused. In 1997, English Partnership¹ acquired a huge piece of barren land. After the soil was decontaminated, a large pavilion was planned to be built on the 1.21 km² site to house the Festival of Britain, a world exhibition to usher in the third millennium. The project was conceived during the mandate of the conservative John Major but it was without doubt Tony Blair who took the planning to a new dimension. The Millennium Dome, as the great pavilion was called, was entrusted to Richard Rogers and it was Sir Robert McAlpine who was in charge of construction. The funds for the project came from the National Lottery Fund, a public company operated since 1994 by the Camelot Group², and amounted to £603,000,000. In the words of the Labour Prime Minister, the Dome would mean the “triumph of confidence over cynicism”.

In 1999, in time for the celebrations, the North Greenwich underground and bus station was opened, connecting the area to the City, Canary Wharf and the West End in a matter of minutes. The marquee closed its doors a year after it opened, having recovered from ticket sales 189 of the £789 million the project cost. The high cost of maintenance and a lack of business initiative led the government to look for investors and the building was eventually transferred to Meridian Delta Ltd., a consortium led by AEG and owned by the US oil magnate Philip Anschutz, in exchange for a share of the profits. The new owner invested £135,000,000 in turning the pavilion into the current O₂ Arena, a large indoor stadium for sports events and concerts surrounded by a huge shopping and entertainment centre, which was used as the venue for the 2012 Olympic Games.

At present growth forecasts in the area are good. Multiple residential and office buildings are going up as part of a twenty-year growth plan. Associated with the London and Greenwich City Councils, the property developer Knight Dragon is leading what is one of the largest regeneration projects in the city with an investment of £8.4 billion. The new development incorporates 15,000 new homes, a block for low-cost creative studies next to Ravensbourne University, which located its headquarters in the area in 2010, two colleges, new offices, shops and green areas. Among those entrusted with the design are the interior designer Tom Dixon and the architect Santiago Calatrava.

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1. Today renamed Homes and Communities Agency, this is a public company that works in urban regeneration.

2. A consortium of private companies formed by International Computers Ltd., Racal and Cadbury-Schweppes.

In January 2000, after nineteen years of disuse, the Bankside power plant reopened its doors as a museum of contemporary art. Due to rising oil prices, the plant had ceased to be profitable in 1973. After a gradual reduction in activity, it closed down in 1981.


The original building dates from 1891 and after post-war reconstruction by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, it supplied both the City and North Southwark. Now, the Tate Modern would be a key part of the regeneration of the area, destined to connect the southern bank of the Thames with the City. It was not the first large-scale cultural institution to operate on this strip of land. To the west, next to Waterloo Station, the Southbank Centre, a pavilion built for the 1951 Festival of Britain, had been operating since 1986 as an independent institution, serving as an exhibition and concert venue. On the same site, the National Theatre had opened in 1963 under the management of Sir Laurence Olivier. To the east of the new museum, coming to London Bridge, the public company Pool of London Partnership had invested around £100 million in the regeneration of enclaves with historical value. Among the highlights were the Borough Food Market, Tower Bridge and the HMS Belfast museum ship that has been moored since 1971. Years later, a cultural corridor has been established that is capable of recovering the south bank of the river for the city.


By the time planning began in 2004, the Tate Modern had become Britain’s second most visited tourist attraction and the world’s busiest museum, counting 30 million visitors since its opening. The expansion project was commissioned to the same architects who undertook the renovation, Herzog & de Meuron. The project consisted of an annexed brick tower to be built on the site of the former power station control facilities. The new building was opened in 2016 under the name The Switch House, in reference to its location. The institution decided shortly afterwards, however, to rename the new wing of the museum after its patron, Sir Leonard Blavatnik, the wealthy owner of Access Industries (a conglomerate of petrochemical, real estate, telecommunications and media companies). By then, real estate fever had invaded the corridor. Next to the Tate Modern, two large groups of buildings had been erected, one for offices and the other for residential use. The first, the 1/2/3 Complex on Southwark Street, was designed by Allies & Morrison LLP and could accommodate 5,000 office workers. The second one was called NEO Bankside and was famous for two reasons: its designers (Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners) were nominated for the RIBA Stirling Prize in 2015, and its developers (Grossvernor and Native Land) managed to get round the mandatory quota of Affordable Housing, setting a precedent that has now become widespread in the luxury housing market.

To the west, in the vicinity of Waterloo Station, Canary Wharf PLC and Qatari Diar Real Estate Investment Company have financed the construction of Southbank Place, a complex of eight towers of homes, offices and commercial spaces at the foot of Jubilee Park, next to the London Eye. 228 of the 877 homes planned are Affordable Houses (a total of 26%, with a reduction of 14% on the 40% usually required by Lambeth Council). Among the architects who were on the team, we could highlight names such as Squire & Partners (in charge of the development plan), Stanton Williams, GRID, Patel Taylor and Townshend Landscape. The project was presented as the continuation of the legacy left by the 1951 Festival of Britain. As they recalled, the event brought together the best of British talent in the fields of design, architecture, art and culture. At the height of the post-war era, the reason behind the festival was to create a sense of successful recovery among visitors, and although it was widely accepted, it was not without controversy. The organiser, Herbert Morrison (Baron of Lambeth and a Labour politician), decided to leave exhibitions with implicit or explicit political content out of the programme; hence those dealing with the nationalization of strategic sectors, the universal health system and workers’ housing were all cancelled. On the other hand, those devoted to scientific progress, town planning and the arts and crafts served to celebrate the end of the devastation.



To the east, London Bridge station was extended and renovated from 2009 to 2017 by the Thameslink expansion programme (a railway operator owned by the Godiva Group). The Shard, the city’s tallest building, was erected on top of it in 2012, following Renzo Piano’s plans. The 95-storey tower was financed by the Qatari authority to the tune of £150 million. Alongside, on a surface area of 53,000 m² and a capacity for 20,000 people, is More London Riverside. The development, better known as the “London Bridge City”, consists of several buildings among which the headquarters of the City Council stands out. Owned by the Kuwait Investment Authority, the building, according to the studio entrusted with the project (Foster & Partners), “communicates the transparency and accessibility of the democratic process”.

King’s Cross Station was originally designed by the architect Lewis Cubitt for the Great Exhibition of 1851. It was built next to Saint Pancras, and both stations together covered a large area of land. A complex was built on the area for the storage and management of raw materials and goods such as coal, potatoes and grain. Regent’s Canal, which had flown through the land since 1820, was used for the distribution of goods. Coal from the mining basins in the industrial North fed the boilers of the adjacent gasometers, which in turn supplied the city’s night lighting. Passengers heading north, however, used to go to nearby Euston station. More central and more suitable for the movement of people, it was, in 1837, the first railway station within London. For a time it was the terminus of the London-Birmingham line. A few years later, in 1849, it was extended and rebuilt by Philip Charles Hardwick in a classical style. For its great hall, John Thomas was commissioned to create a group of allegorical figures representing the cities the train travelled to: Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester.


The decline of the area came after the Second World War, when the old railway facilities gradually became obsolete. The once frenetic activity came to a definitive halt in 1981. The area, remote and considerably large, was abandoned and fell outside the radar of the authorities. The old hangars and warehouses were occupied, sometimes illegally, by artists and designers. On the other hand, the area soon became known among the youth for its raves and gained popularity beyond Bohemian circles. However, not everything there was so colourful. The use and abuse of drugs and the associated market, and the presence of prostitution contributed to the area’s poor reputation. Even though prices hit rock bottom, small investors kept away. It was too risky to open a business in the area.


This remained so until in the early 1990s, when the government founded the King’s Cross Partnership to attract investors to undertake the rehabilitation of the site. The opening of cultural institutions was part of the recovery strategy. In 1992 the London Canal Museum was opened and the British Library opened its current premises in 1997. However, investors did not really pay attention until 2000, when the launch of High Speed 1 was announced, a project to build the infrastructure for what is now the Euro Star, a high-speed train that connected St. Pancras station to Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam and Rotterdam in record time.

When the route opened in 2007, the area was already a hive of new developments. In 2006, Allies and Morrison and Porphyrios Associates obtained a building permit for the regeneration plan. It was one of the largest projects in Europe, covering an area of 24 hectares, with an abundance of residential, commercial, office and leisure space. It was then that, with the aim of developing the project, King’s Cross Central Ltd. was set up, with the participation of Argent Group, London & Continental Railways Ltd. and DHL. Within the framework of the project, we could highlight the following features: the rehabilitation and extension of King’s Cross station by John McAslan + Partners; One Pancras Square, David Chipperfield’s office building which articulates the entrance to the block of the same name; and Coal Drops Yard, the conversion of the old coal warehouses into a shopping centre for avant-garde fashion designed by Thomas Heatherwick. Perhaps the best-known tenant is Google: the Internet giant, which already has a space in Pancras Square, announced in 2017 that it would invest one billion pounds in the construction of its new headquarters. Furthermore, at the nearby station of Euston High Speed 2 is already under development, a new high-speed line that will reach Birmingham in 2026 and from there extend to Manchester, Sheffield and Leeds in the early years of the coming decade. When work is completed, some of these cities will be less than a short journey away from many neighbourhoods in the city itself, perhaps re-establishing the flow of capital between the old industrial cities of the North and London.