| City Hall | |
|---|---|
 City Hall seen across Royal Victoria Dock | |
 Interactive map of City Hall | |
| General information | |
| Status | Completed |
| Architectural style | Neo-futurism |
| Location | Kamal Chunchie Way, London, E16 1ZE[1] |
| Coordinates | 51°30′25″N0°00′58″E / 51.507021°N 0.016111°E /51.507021; 0.016111 |
| Construction started | March 2011[2] |
| Completed | July 2012[2] |
| Opening | September 2012 (repurposed as Greater London City Hall January 2022) |
| Cost | £30 million[2] |
| Owner | Greater London Authority[3] |
| Technical details | |
| Floor area | 7,000 m2 (75,000 sq ft)[2] |
| Design and construction | |
| Architect | WilkinsonEyre[2] |
| Structural engineer | Arup Group[2] |
| Services engineer | Arup Group[2] |
| Main contractor | ISG[2] |
City Hall, in theLondon Borough of Newham ineastLondon, is the headquarters of theGreater London Authority (GLA), the regional government forGreater London. It replaced theprevious City Hall, inSouthwark in 2022. The building opened in 2012 and was previously an exhibition centre for sustainable architecture, known asThe Crystal. Built and opened bySiemens, it was the first building in the world to reach the highest sustainability award levels inLEED andBREEAM. It was bought by the GLA in 2019 for theLondon Docklands redevelopment project.[4]
The building is situated next to the redevelopedRoyal Victoria Dock inCanning Town. The northern terminus of theLondon cable car, andRoyal Victoria station, theDocklands Light Railway andCustom House railway station on theElizabeth line are within walking distance.[5] It is close toLondon City Airport.
The Crystal was built as a key part of the Green Enterprise District policy of theLondon Development Agency.[6]
The building was designed byPerkins+Will (fit-out, design leader) andWilkinson Eyre Architects (shell and core), withArup Group who were the building and civil engineers, andTownshend Landscape Architects who designed the public realm.[2]Event Communications were the exhibition designers,[2] responsible for the interpretive planning, exhibition design and creative direction, graphic design, media direction and construction management for the exhibition spaces.[7] The building was the first to achieve the highest sustainable building accolades, platinum and outstanding respectively, from the world's two leading accreditation bodies,LEED[8] andBREEAM.[9]
When it opened, the Crystal contained a permanent exhibition aboutsustainable development, and was owned and operated bySiemens. In 2016, Siemens sold the building to the GLA, who acquired it to use as a base for theMayor of London's £3.5bn project to regenerate theRoyal Docks. After Siemens vacated the building in 2019, it was used by the Royal Docks regeneration team but large parts of the building remained empty.[3][5][7]
In June 2020, the Mayor of LondonSadiq Khan announced that he was consulting on relocating the headquarters of the GLA fromCity Hall in Southwark to The Crystal in order to save £55 million for the GLA over the course of five years.[3] The decision was confirmed on 3 November 2020; Newham Borough Council gave permission for a change of use for the building in December 2020.[10][11] The move was completed in the third week of January 2022, delayed from the previous planned opening date in December 2021.[12] The building was renamed "City Hall" in December 2021.[1][13]
The entire site is 18,000 square metres (190,000 sq ft) in size and the surrounding landscape was designed to be a sustainable urban landscape to help encourage a shift in the social ideology, making 'sustainability' more attractive and allowing people to participate in social activities within the site, which includes local food programmes and community gardens to help foster this principle.[14]
The building contains a number of sustainable technologies, including thebuilding management system andKNX infrastructure. The building control devices, such as lighting, windows, blinds and heating, are connected using the KNX protocol. The building has over 2,500 KNX connected devices.[15]
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