Discovering an example of green leadership in London.
Regular readers will have noticed that, of late, each Saturday morning my riding buddy Sam and I have gone on London explorations. Yesterday we road 70km, with a destination of the longest pier in London at Erith. We then chose to ride the Thames Path beside the river all the way back to Greenwich, taking in the industrial activity along the way.
As we rode along, we came upon this stunning building, the Riverside Resource Facility run by Cory Energy, do visit their page to see the sheer scale of how much waste from London they turn to energy, and all of it carried downriver by barge. What a hidden piece of green leadership right in London!
The building itself was a £250m project opened in 2011. I cannot describe the scale of it to you, but our ride took us within a few meters of the building. I can only say that it had a feel similar to Teminal 5 at London’s Heathrow airport, which, when built, was the largest building in Europe.
Now, yesterday’s post was called: “Once again, less is more“, referencing miminalist architecture and featuring the frontage of the huge AEG Generator plant in Berlin from over 100 years ago. I am so, so impressed by the beauty of the Riverside Resource Facility building, just stunning. Kudos indeed to Race Cottam Associates as the architects.
I also have so smile at one more thing I found when researching. The next phase of this project is double the budget and is called the Riverside Energy Park, currently in the developments stages. I loved seeing that my long time client Stantec acted as lead planning and environmental advisor to support the project at development stage. I love how Stantec lead on innovation and iconic projects around the world.
This is truly an iconic project, simply amazed that I had to discover it by riding a bike past it. I hope more noise is made about it! For now, watch this from Cory Energy about the “green highway” they use (the River Thames)