There is yet another reason to walk up the seven flights of stairs of a defunct car park in Peckham. The latest architectural commission by its highly-acclaimed resident cultural body is revealed. This time, Bold Tendencies has tasked young practice Cooke Fawcett Architects with creating a big viewing platform and kiosk up one end of the top, open-air floor of the car park.
Called the Peckham Observatory, the 3.5m-wide platform of hardwood timber decking attached to a locally-made steel structure is accessed by steps and a bleacher seating system.
At 3.5m above the car park, visitors have increased views on to sunsets over central London and on to Bold Tendencies’ other al fresco delights: Practice Architecture’s crowd-pleasing Frank’s Café, the Derek Jarman corner garden, and installations by artists including Isaac Olvera and Richard Wentworth.
The rooftop carpark is an attraction for Londoners
As well as adding aesthetically to a quieter end of the site, the platform has a functional role to play. It shelters concert-goers when they collect their tickets from the kiosk, positioned beneath it. The architects Oliver Cooke and Francis Fawcett have painted this simple, timber-framed box dark blue, to complement the green paint of the steelwork. This palette in turn contrasts with artist Simon Whybray’s nearby pink staircases – another Bold Tendencies commission.
Fawcett and Cooke founded their eponymous London firm in 2015, having worked together at Stirling Prize-winning outfit Herzog & de Meuron. This Bold Tendencies commission follows their acoustic Concert Wall for The Multi-Story Orchestra, which has a summer-long residency on a lower level of the car park.
This is the 11th year that Bold Tendencies’ Hannah Barry has amassed site-specific cultural events here. She is now considering commissioning an architecture piece for the car park’s lower levels, to make more of those areas. ‘We are interested in the ways people gather together,’ she says.
The observatory is located on the roof of a multi-storey car park in Peckham, London. Photography: Peter Landers
Cooke Fawcett Architects also designed a concert wall for an orchestra to play in front of. Photography: Peter Landers
The concert wall is located within the multi-storey car park. Photography: Peter Landers
Frank’s Café is designed by Practice Architecture. Photography: Richard Bryant
The red canopy of Frank’s, which opens in London during the summer months. Photography: Richard Bryant
Architectural details of Practice Architecture’s Frank’s pavilion and structure. Photography: Richard Bryant
The warm interiors of Practice Architecture's Straw Auditorium where performances and events take place. Photography: Damian Griffiths
The exterior of the Straw Auditorium, built on the eighth floor of the multi-storey carpark. Photography: Damian Griffiths
INFORMATION
For more information, visit the Bold Tendencies website and the Cooke Fawcett Architects website
ADDRESS
Bold Tendencies
95a Rye Lane
London SE15 4TG
-
Detour Discotheque is bringing ‘the world’s dreamiest party’ to PugliaThe pop-up event, La Dolce Vita Disco, promises dancing, good food and sunshine in a 16th-century Italian farmhouse
-
Pierpaolo Piccioli is heading to Balenciaga as creative directorFormer Valentino creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli will replace Demna, who is heading to Gucci
-
The best gardening fashion and accessories for the green-fingeredAs RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2025 opens to the public tomorrow, the Wallpaper* style team selects the best gardening-inspired fashion and accessories – from the functional to the fantastical
-
Innovative coastal garden turns heads at this year’s RHS Chelsea Flower ShowLandscape Designer Nigel Dunnett’s ‘Hospitalfield Arts Garden’ at Chelsea Flower Show 2025 has been making waves with its progressive approach to sustainable landscape and planting design
-
What to see at the London Festival of Architecture 2025June is all about the London Festival of Architecture 2025; we browsed the over 450-event rich programme for its highlights, so you won't have to
-
V&A East Storehouse is a new London museum, but not as you know itDesigned by DS+R, the V&A East Storehouse immerses visitors in history as objects of all scales mesmerise, seemingly ‘floating’ in all directions
-
Timeless yet daring, this Marylebone penthouse 'floats' on top of a grand London buildingA Marylebone penthouse near Regent’s Park by design studio Wendover is transformed into a light-filled family home
-
Revamped National Gallery Sainsbury Wing unveiled: Annabelle Selldorf gives us a tourThe National Gallery Sainsbury Wing redesign by Selldorf Architects is ready to open its doors to the public in London; we took the tour
-
Wild sauna, anyone? The ultimate guide to exploring deep heat in the UK outdoors‘Wild Sauna’, a new book exploring the finest outdoor establishments for the ultimate deep-heat experience in the UK, has hit the shelves; we find out more about the growing trend
-
A new London house delights in robust brutalist detailing and diffused lightLondon's House in a Walled Garden by Henley Halebrown was designed to dovetail in its historic context
-
A Sussex beach house boldly reimagines its seaside typologyA bold and uncompromising Sussex beach house reconfigures the vernacular to maximise coastal views but maintain privacy
