A former industrial site, turned luxurious, 10-acre, mixed-use development, Thames City brings a healthy dose of greenery to London’s Nine Elms. arc speaks to Foundry about the site’s lighting design, following its Best of the Best success at the [d]arc awards.

In Nine Elms, London, a stone’s throw from Vauxhall, and the recently revitalised Battersea Power Station, lies Thames City – a 10-acre, former industrial site that has been transformed into a landmark, residential-led mixed-use development.

The development, for which Phase 1 was completed last year, signals a vibrant new chapter for the area, establishing Nine Elms as a global destination in its own right. Distinguished by a stunning collection of landscape spaces, including courtyards, green podium gardens, and an expansive linear park, Thames City features a series of beautifully designed green spaces, ideal for outdoor recreation, while a thoughtfully planned network of waterside walkways, cycle paths, and green areas looks to promote active lifestyles and enhance the wellbeing of those who visit.

Alongside the lush and verdant landscaped areas, Phase 1 also features two new towers – No. 8, and No. 9 – standing at 35 and 54-storeys tall respectively, from a two-storey podium. These buildings offer new, luxury riverside apartments, and a host of resident amenities, including wellness facilities, a 30-metre-long swimming pool, residents lounge, cinema, karaoke rooms, private dining, and a sky lounge.

The initial lighting masterplan for this site came from Equation Lighting, who having previously worked on neighbouring sites at Battersea Power Station and Nine Elms, looked to create a unity across the exterior green spaces.

Keith Miller, Director at Equation, reflects on the early stages of the project: “There is a large green space that connects Battersea Bridge to Nine Elms, and we were involved in a lot of the development here, so we were well placed to come into this project as lighting consultants. The whole development was divided into two phases – Phase 1 was the three towers and the podium, while Phase 2 was a series of buildings along Nine Elms Road.

“This meant that there was a continuity. Externally, we could have the same philosophy in all of the different developments, and part of the idea of the masterplan was that it was one linear park – even though there were four or five different developers, in terms of the experience of the users, it would be a seamless journey where you could walk from Vauxhall, through Battersea, and into Nine Elms, and everything externally feels of a piece.”

Following this initial concept masterplan created by Equation, the client employed D&B contractor Midgard, who in turn brought in Foundry to realise the lighting design for the site alongside the client team and wider design partners of architects SOM and landscape architects Gillespies.

Speaking to arc, Neale Smith, Director at Foundry, takes us through their beginnings on the project, and how working off a pre-existing masterplan affected their approach. “Equation created a concept, which formed part of the employer’s requirements, and we were given this just after our appointment. We looked at this, and the initial strategy on how they saw the space at that stage, and then it was our job to build upon that. We looked at where we could deviate, and how we could work with the design team and the client to make it a more robust deliverable.”

Ellie Cozens, Design Director at Foundry, adds: “The masterplan and the information that we were provided gave us a good framework to work with, and the client was very open to building on it. As the space has evolved and as we got to learn more about this development, as it is quite complex with the towers, the podium level, and the landscape areas, the scheme took on legs of its own and evolved over the course of the project, as you’d expect.

“We used the masterplan as a framework – it is something that the client had agreed to, and the principles were very much there. Our job was to look at it and work out how to deliver it, which is often the hardest part of the job, especially with contractors and design and build, and value engineering, and all of the other challenges that we know. We looked at how we could make the space functional, while also maintaining a level of quality and lit effect that we wanted to see in the end product.”

With Equation’s initial concept masterplan in place, the team at Foundry looked at how they could elevate this further, examining primarily the ways in which people were going to be using the myriad exterior spaces, and the ways in which they each came together.

“It was all about the guest experience, and that experience after dark, because it is in the middle of a quite recently built-up area. Although the podium is completely resident-owned, the landscaped areas are open to the public,” Cozens continues.

“From a light point of view, it had to be safe, it had to be functional, we had to tick those boxes – but we also wanted a space that not only did that, but also encouraged people to dwell there and actually enjoy the space after dark. Especially in London, where there’s very few spaces like this that visitors can feel safe in and actually want to enjoy.

It was fun to be able to create those moments – it gives people a chance to take a beat.

“We did this by using lighting that was a lot more low level, more focused on functional pathway pools of guiding people through spaces. It’s not about overlighting it. We worked really closely with Gillespie and understanding all of the foliage and the planting, and how that would evolve over the seasons.”

To further emphasise the feeling of evolution and growth, Foundry utilised tunable white lighting throughout, carefully balanced to show the space transforming over the course of an evening, rather than a single static image.

“It turns it into something that you want to wander through, see what’s going on and enjoy it,” Cozens adds.

“That was very much a focus for us, and came to be a focus for the clients as well – to make it a space that people could enjoy and want to spend time in, not just transition through.”

With one of the primary goals of the landscaped areas being to promote active lifestyles and enhance the wellbeing of those using the space, the tunability of the lighting helps to contribute to a sense of tranquillity.

Smith explains: “As a visitor, you’re effectively in the middle of Vauxhall, but when you’re sat on the podium, it’s a very calming experience. All you hear is rustling leaves. If you really focus you might hear cars and sirens in the distance, but when you’re up there, everything else seems to zone out.

“It’s the same when you’re going through the landscaped areas too; there’s waterways, there’s little parks, and it’s all about making people stop and think.

“Whether you’re hearing the movement in the water, or where we have light grazing across it, picking up the ripples, we wanted to create a more sensory, intimate environment across a large scale. We did this by focusing on low level lighting, but also by concealing columns in places where you weren’t seeing where the light was coming from, and also using the buildings as a backdrop, where these are framing the pedestrian routes.”

The low level lighting also contributes towards the dark sky considerations of the project – a fundamental aspect for all landscape lighting projects to bear in mind. How Foundry tackled this was by taking the time to think about where, and how much light was needed.

Cozens adds: “We wanted to make the lighting purposeful. Something that we did quite successfully on this project was define what we actually needed from the lighting. We challenged what you might typically do, especially with regards to street lighting on the surrounding roadways. We looked at the categorisation, but dug into it a bit further. We knew that we needed uniformity, but we asked ourselves if there was a cleverer way of doing things? Is there a better fitting that directs light downwards, that is not overly bright or reflecting light upwards?

“It was the same with the façade lighting as well. Although the buildings were massive, they had quite minimal façade lighting. We wanted to light the top band, and all of the lighting was designed at prefix angles, so it only caught certain bits of the metal in a certain way, and reduced all of the upward spill of light.

“These little details all came together to make sure that, although we’re keeping to the dark sky requirements and trying to reduce the light pollution, we’re also not losing all of the vertical illumination.”

Smith continues: “We worked really closely with the planners to minimise any spill light from upward light. Where we’ve got lights around the perimeter of the building that are uplighting the façade, they are all angled, even at pedestrian level, so that there’s nothing going straight up into the sky. There are also a lot of capping details around the building that limit upward light spill. We also worked with the lighting manufacturers to get the right optical control, and making sure when we were lighting the roads, there was nothing spilling back onto pavements – we had quite a harsh cutoff with zero back spill. Everybody across the board thought about these things, whether directly or indirectly.”

This joined up thinking is just one of the ways in which Foundry feel that they worked well with Midgard, and the wider design team.

Cozens explains the collaborative nature of the project further: “The best projects are those where everyone accepts each other’s skillset and their expertise. It’s not to say that there weren’t disagreements, especially when it came to costs, but when we put the case forward for the cost, explain it, and educate the client, they were understanding.

“A lot of people in construction now have an understanding of lighting that maybe they didn’t have ten years ago – they understand lux levels and uniformity, but they also acknowledge that there is a little bit more that goes into it. Yes, we can tick a ‘light level’ box, but is it going to be pleasant? Is this lighting creating a sense of security and safety? These are the moments where our experience comes in and we have to educate the client. In this instance, they were very open to it; sometimes it’s a challenge, but here it was a lot easier.

“We were really involved in every intimate detail, for our sins in some ways, but it meant that the design that we had agreed on day one, we were able to deliver and maintain across the board, which is really hard to do in this day and age. It was challenging, but it was definitely something that, in the end, resulted in a better outcome.”

That’s not to say that this project wasn’t without its challenges. The biggest of which, according to Smith, was bringing it all to life in the middle of the pandemic. With work starting in the summer of 2020, the knock-on effects of prolonged lead times – sometimes taking up to six months for fixtures to be delivered – meant that, while some parties were keen to keep the project on target, the pandemic led to frustrating delays.

“The biggest challenge was managing these delays, because everybody was wanting to get the job moving, get installation teams moving, and silly things like missing components, missing drivers that were integral to light fittings, was holding up the process and preventing things from getting delivered.”

Cozens added that maintaining the integrity of the specification also proved to be one of the bigger hurdles to overcome. She says: “The contractor was always looking for the cheapest, quicker solution, so trying to keep them happy while also maintaining the design and not sacrificing too many elements was one of the hardest challenges.

“Trying to keep the project cohesive was also difficult. There are so many different spaces, from the large landscape, to the street lighting – so we had to balance all of that and make it feel all part of one unified scheme, especially when it was all done at different times and in different phases. The podium was finished a lot sooner than the masterplan; the street lighting went in first; the buildings were done separately to everything; it was all very staggered. So, trying to continue to keep that thread and link through the space, and keep the lighting consistent and enjoyable and still quite special was a challenge, but I think it has been done quite successfully.”

An integral factor to the consistent feeling across the site was in the illumination of the two residential buildings. Foundry was responsible for illuminating the interior amenity spaces, as well as the façades. This meant that, as Smith explains, there had to be a synergy between the interior and exterior lighting. “The buildings are heavily glazed around the amenity spaces, so there are a lot of connections between the interior and exterior. So, there was a conscious decision to make sure that there would be a continuity and balance between the inside and out, focusing on transition, making sure we had a consistency in colour temperature – we had tunable white inside and outside, so we could balance everything up. With this, there was definitely a considered, joined-up thinking process in how we transition from inside to out.”

Following the completion of Phase 1 of the project – with talks underway for Phase 2 – Smith and Cozens reflect on the lighting scheme with a lot of pride, particularly in the way that the lighting contributes to the overall aesthetic of the space.

“It’s a very calming experience,” says Smith. “Even though a lot of the light is focusing on surface materials, highlighting or leaving in darkness certain elements, the lighting feels natural. You seamlessly transition through the space without really thinking too much about it.

“The last time I was there, someone was sat out on the podium at six o’clock at night, on a chair, lying back with his feet up, and he looked like he was asleep, just enjoying the space in complete bliss. This just shows how, from a resident point of view, it’s being used and enjoyed.”

“It just feels at home – you want to go and explore, especially on the podium with all the planting, you want to see what is around the corner. That’s the bit that lighting does. You don’t necessarily notice, but that’s why you feel like that,” adds Cozens.

The project was recognised at the 2024 [d]arc awards, collecting not only the Spaces award for landscape lighting, but also the Best of the Best award – the highest accolade in the awards programme. A testament to the importance of crafting beautiful, well lit green spaces in which to escape the hubbub of of London city centre.

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