SKY TV Campus
Where land and SKY meet
Location: London, UK
Client: SKY Plc
Year: 2017
Site Area: 5 hectares
SKY TV is a place of imagination, creation, connection. To support these lofty pursuits, the expansive landscape was established to provide a strong grounding, embracing and softly nurturing buildings and people. In a wonderful series of experiential gardens, the campus landscape, seamlessly connects earth to building to SKY.
Sky UK recently undertook extensive redevelopment works on their campus to consolidate the company’s operations and create up to 12,000 jobs. The impressive campus is a community in its own right, encompassing office space, studios, production facilities, research and development zones, health centre, cafes and retail. The purpose of the landscape is to knit this site together in a clear and beautiful way.
The vision, developed hand-in-hand with the client, was to create a world-class campus landscape that brings joy to people’s everyday experience. The brief was to create a contemporary English garden, interpreted as a rich and choreographed landscape, considered throughout hours of the day, and seasons of the year. It explores a variety of garden typologies, including perennial garden, great lawn with a single oak, meadows and woodlands. These areas provide opportunities for people to contemplate, be refreshed and inspired, to meet others and socialise, to hold outdoor meetings, and to have a walk, run, or participate in many other activities.
100,000 diverse plants – including a 250m long ecological corridor, 120m of continuous native hedgerows, and 2,500 sqm of carefully selected meadows to attract butterflies and bees – create a rich environment. 264 new trees were planted on site, are were placed to create outdoor rooms, frame special views, act as focal points, or to obstruct views to the landfill beyond.
This landscape contributes interest and inspiration at all times, and has become a world-class precedent, sought out by numerous book, magazine and online publications, of how to create a corporate campus that enriches the lives of people, enhances ecological health, promotes connectivity, and simply creates a place of joy and beauty out of a once forlorn site. Most rewarding is the feedback we receive from SKY staff that the landscape is ‘spectacular’, ‘breath-taking’, and that it makes the Sky campus a wonderful place to be.
