Extending 22 acres and comprising three performance venues and the Hayward Gallery, SBC can claim to be Europe’s largest centre for the arts, regularly attracting more than 4m visits a year. But it wasn’t always so easy… A centerpiece of the Tonic for the Nation Great Exhibition of 1951, the centre had sat for decades, unloved and unappreciated, on the south side of the River Thames, a tired set of post war arts buildings that ‘didn’t quite work’.

This changed in the wake of a wholesale masterplanning and re-birthing process that catapulted SBC into the heart of a new cultural quarter for London and a riverwalk that extends from the London Eye to Tower Bridge. The masterplan opened the space, rationalized horizontal and vertical circulation routes, gained a new pedestrian bridge across the River. The project introduced a host of retail and catering outlets and overhauled its program. The result, the People’s Palace, became not just a place to rest and hang-out, but a place to be seen.

James sat alongside architect Rick Mather’s masterplanning team over four years working with the SBC CEO and his executive.