Project Orange was invited to enter a competition for a new mixed use, co-working, office and retail masterplan for an incredibly constrained site in Waterloo. The project incorporated three disparate historic railway arches along the Leake street tunnel with a newly designed tower placed on top. The adjacent iconic 'High-Tech’ Waterloo Terminal provides the backdrop to the new tower, which finds half of its structure poking out from beneath the station.

Out entry explored the use of Cross Laminated Timber construction methods to produce a lightweight and sustainable tower. It forms a natural progression, from the ‘Industrial-Tech’ of the Victorian railway arches, to the ‘High-Tech of the Eurostar Terminal, and now onto the ‘Eco-Tech’ of CLT. The capability’s of this new technology lends itself perfectly to the project with is lightweight nature and ability to be craned onto the site in prefabricated components allowing for speedy and efficient construction on what is a highly inaccessible site.

The aesthetics of the tower play on the history of timber construction, exploring the notion of what a timber building could look like in a 21st century context. The interior broke down the idea of an open-plan office proposing varying ranges of privacy and intimacy and a constant exposure to nature. The tower and its surrounding arches form a masterplan more focused on contemporary co-working ideas as part of a wider network of similarly positioned initiatives in the greater Waterloo area.