White City Place

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The BBC Media Village plaza in 2004

White City Place is the name given to the collection of buildings formerly known as BBC Media Village (more commonly simply as White City or W12 within the BBC). White City Place is a collection of six buildings occupying a 17-acre site off Wood Lane, White City in West London, bordered by South Africa Road, Dorando Close and the A40 Westway. The site is a short distance along Wood Lane from BBC Television Centre. All formerly properties of the BBC, only two buildings – Broadcast Centre and the Lighthouse – are currently occupied by BBC staff.

The BBC sold the majority of buildings on the site in 2015 and it was renamed White City Place by new owners Stanhope and Mitsui Fudosan.[1][2]

BBC White City
White City One in 2013

The first building on the site, BBC White City, was designed by architects Scott Brownrigg & Turner and was opened in 1990.[3] Built on the site of the 1908 Franco-British Exhibition, White City was constructed on the location of the former White City Stadium (The Great Stadium) used for the 1908 Summer Olympics. The stadium was demolished in 1985 and parts of the Olympic swimming pool were also discovered when the foundations of the new building were laid.[4]

The building was originally intended to be a new home for BBC Radio, replacing Broadcasting House.[5] This plan was scrapped and the building instead became office space with fifty edit suites, various Television production teams, the Digital Switchover team, BBC Academy, the Children in Need charity and parts of Operations and HR, as well as a large restaurant.[6]

It housed most of the BBC's current affairs and factual and learning programmes, such as Panorama, Top Gear (where it featured in a segment about the Peel P50),[7] Watchdog and many others. The BBC vacated the building in March 2013 and sold it to developers.[6] It has sometimes been referred to as White City One to distinguish it from the wider site.[8]

Architectural critic Jonathan Glancey wrote in The Guardian in 2002 that by comparison to the "handsome, if timeworn ships of the line" such as Broadcasting House and Bush House, White City was "a tin-pot freighter, inefficient, ugly, and old before its time."[9] Rachid Errtibi, a facilities coordinator at the BBC reflected that "most staff disliked the White City building for one reason or another [but] the building did have a unique character, and was flexible enough to accommodate any new departments at short notice – achieved simply and quickly by putting up a few glass partition panels and rearranging furniture, at minimum cost."[6][10]

Media Village
BBC Media Centre in 2013. The fenced area at the front of the building was the intended site for the cancelled Music Box building.[3]
BBC Broadcast Centre and Energy Centre in 2010. The One Show was broadcast from a studio in Energy Centre until 2013. The Olympic Rings mark the finishing line of the 1908 Olympic marathon.

Development

Construction of the second phase of the development began in September 2001 and the site was officially opened in May 2004 and was known as the Media Village.[2] It consists of five further buildings in addition to White City One – Media Centre, Broadcast Centre, Energy Centre, Garden House and the Lighthouse.[11] The buildings were designed by Allies and Morrison Architects and Buro Happold and built by Bovis Lend Lease. In addition to BBC offices, the site included a post office, a Tesco Express, a Starbucks, a Davy's wine bar and several other retail outlets, many of which have now been replaced.[3][11] To pay for construction costs, the BBC signed a 30-year deal with Land Securities Trillium, Britain's largest property developer.[3][11]

The rear of Media Centre included gardens designed by Christopher Bradley-Hole.[3] A poem Voices of White City by Poet Laureate Andrew Motion was inlaid into the paving in the piazza.[3] The site featured artworks such as Simon Patterson's art wall in Broadcast Centre which is based on First World War dazzle camouflage and Yuko Shiraishi's mural in Media Centre reception. She was also responsible for the overall colour scheme in both buildings.[3][12] Energy Centre features the Olympic Rings as a marker of the finishing line of the 1908 Olympic marathon, with a plaque unveiled by IOC president Jacques Rogge in 2005.[13]

A further planned building, the Music Box, designed by Foreign Office Architects was originally scheduled for opening in 2006, but was cancelled in 2008 before construction began.[14] It would have been a concert hall and recording venue for the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, the BBC Concert Orchestra and the BBC Singers.[3][15]

Occupants

In 2004, it was intended that the Garden House and Lighthouse would be leased by independent production companies working with the BBC.[3]

The Media Centre was the global headquarters for the BBC's for-profit publishing subsidiary BBC Worldwide from 2008 until 2015, when it moved into the former BBC News annex of Television Centre.[2][16] Media Centre also housed non-broadcast divisions of the BBC which had been moved from central London to make way for the redevelopment of Broadcasting House.[2] Media Centre was used for broadcasts of Watchdog and Rogue Traders as well as a filming location for The Thick of It.[2]

Some BBC Television-making departments were located in Media Centre following the vacating of Television Centre in 2013 including Comedy, Entertainment & Events and Factual. The BBC then left Media Centre and Garden House, with staff relocated to Broadcast Centre, Broadcasting House, Grafton House and some to MediaCityUK in Salford. Media Centre and Garden House closed on 10 July 2015 following the sale to Stanhope and Mitsui Fudosan. It was stated that the BBC received £87 million for the sale.[8]

At the time of its closure in July 2015, Garden House was mainly occupied by Atos and associated sub-contractors' teams following the sale of BBC Technology to Siemens in 2004.[2]

Broadcast Centre continued to house BBC Design & Engineering staff, BBC Global News, BBC Studios production staff and Marketing and Audiences staff until 2020. The majority of the building is now leased to ITV following the closure of The London Studios.[17]

Red Bee Media broadcast channels including BBC One, Channel 4, Channel 5, BT Sport from Broadcast Centre.

The Energy Centre provides services to the entire site, and between 2008 and 2018 was the offices for the Top Gear television production team and the Top Gear magazine team.[10] They moved into the main BBC Studios offices in Broadcast Centre in 2018. The One Show studio was located in the Energy Centre from 2007 to 2013 before moving to the newly built Peel Wing of Broadcasting House.[18][19][20]

In March 2019, BBC Research & Development moved into the Lighthouse building, having vacated Centre House on Wood Lane.[21]

A new building, Gateway Central, was constructed in 2022 and will be the headquarters of L'Oréal.[22]

White City Place

Under new owners Stanhope and Mitsui Fudosan, the site has been renamed White City Place and an extensive refurbishment and refitting of the vacated properties on the site has taken place.[23][2] The former Media Centre was renamed to The MediaWorks[24] and a significant renovation of White City One, renamed to The WestWorks, changed its main entrance and introduced a row of shops facing the piazza.[25]

References
  1. Plunkett, John (5 June 2015). "BBC move continues after £87m deal for Media Village". The Guardian. Retrieved 24 July 2015.
  2. Andrew Fullerton Media Centre, London: first in, last out, BBC blogs, 10 July 2015
  3. BBC Media Village White City, BBC Press pack 5 May 2004
  4. "BBC buildings". BBC History. Archived from the original on 15 September 2007. Retrieved 5 November 2007.
  5. Glenn Aylett https://www.transdiffusion.org/2005/01/01/bbc_2 BBC Infrastructure, Transdiffusion 1 January 2005
  6. Errtibi, Rachid (28 March 2013). "Closure of the White City building". BBC. Retrieved 15 May 2013.
  7. The Smallest Car in the World at the BBC, Top Gear series 10, episode 3
  8. BBC agrees property deal to save millions, BBC Press Release, 5 June 2015
  9. Jonathan Glancey, Top Storeys, The Guardian, 29 July 2002
  10. Richard Porter, And On That Bombshell: Inside the Madness and Genius of Top Gear (Orion, 2015)
  11. New BBC Media Village opens tomorrow BBC Press Office, 11 May 2004
  12. Jeremy Myerson, Philip Ross, Space to Work: New Office Design (Laurence King Publishing, 2006), pp 76–81
  13. Mark Barden London's first Olympics, BBC News 26 April 2008
  14. BBC Music Box, DesignBuild Network, accessed 8 May 2016
  15. The BBC Music Box, openbuildings.com, URL accessed 7 May 2016
  16. "Goodbye to Media Centre after 11 years". Ariel. BBC. 10 July 2015. Retrieved 24 July 2015.
  17. Itv Move All London Staff Into Creative Campus At White City, White City Place, 3 May 2022
  18. BBC's The One Show taken off air by fire alarm BBC News, 24 February 2011
  19. The One Show moves in, BBC Broadcasting House, accessed 8 May 2016
  20. BBC's The One Show – an Innovation-led solution, Lighting & Sound Magazine, July 2014
  21. BBC R&D IRFS Weeknotes 282 BBC R&D, 28 February 2019
  22. Gateway Central, White City Place, accessed 18 June 2023
  23. Plunkett, John (5 June 2015). "BBC move continues after £87m deal for Media Village". The Guardian. Retrieved 24 July 2015.
  24. "The MediaWorks". White City Place. Retrieved 9 May 2017.
  25. "The WestWorks". White City Place. Retrieved 9 May 2017.

Media related to BBC White City at Wikimedia Commons

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