Updated consultation documents circulated this week reveal revised designs for the Peckham Square workspace hub, with Architecture 00 appointed to deliver an affordable workspace building of around five to seven storeys on car parking space behind the Peckham Pulse leisure centre, to the left of Peckham Square.
The wider proposals, brought forward by Southwark Council, also include cycling and walking routes, lighting, floor mosaics and children’s play areas across the square, which sits opposite Will Alsop’s Stirling Prize-winning Peckham Library. Compared with plans put to consultation in February 2025, the new designs widen a segregated cycle route and enlarge a play space at the heart of the square.
Affordable workspace strategy drives Peckham Square workspace hub brief
The council’s consultation website states the project follows the introduction of a new Affordable Workspace Strategy in summer 2025, which commits the council to supporting small and medium enterprises. The workspace hub itself, designed by Architecture 00, would occupy what is currently a surface car park and form one of the more substantial new additions to the regeneration area.
Southwark Council’s own consultation data adds further context to the direction of travel for the wider site: 80% of residents said they would like to see Peckham Arch removed. The Arch is a 35-metre canopy structure designed by John McAslan, installed at the front of the square in 1994. Southwark has said it decided to pursue removal following a structural survey completed in 2024, though the findings of that survey were never published. A council spokesperson previously stated that, if the Arch were not included in a final design, its relocation to another site was not under consideration. Whether that remains the council’s position is unclear.
The fate of the Arch has been a recurring flashpoint across multiple design iterations for the site. Both Carl Turner, appointed in 2016, and Spheron, appointed in 2021, included its removal in their respective schemes. Both proposals went unrealised, and both attracted a campaign against the Arch’s demolition. Speaking to the Architects’ Journal in 2023, local architect Benedict O’Looney argued the structure should be restored as an example of ‘1990s High-Tech architecture’ and ‘a significant early work by Troughton McAslan, beautifully detailed in steel and in-situ concrete work’. O’Looney also described it as ‘a modern version of the “town loggia” (eg the Loggia dei Lanzi in Florence), an open but covered market space, to be found wonderfully surviving in Renaissance structures in the market squares of Ledbury, Faversham, Peterborough and so many other places.’
When Graeme Massie and Scott Whitby were appointed to replace Spheron, the pair said they would consider retaining the landmark structure. The current consultation documents published by Graeme Massie Architects and Scott Whitby Studio show their updated plans for the square itself.
Architect changes at 91–93 High Street as scheme scales back
The consultation also discloses a change of architect for council-owned properties at 91–93 High Street. Knox Bhavan, described in the consultation as a local practice, has been replaced by London-based APTA, which will design what the consultation calls a ‘more modest, sympathetic and cost-effective extension’ of the two-storey Victorian brick buildings. Residential uses and a gallery space, which featured in the approved 2023 scheme, have been removed from the programme.
APTA’s proposals include a single-storey extension for retail or a café, facing the refurbished Peckham Square. The earlier approved scheme had provided a home for local arts charity Peckham Platform alongside residential and workspace uses. Before Knox Bhavan, Carl Turner and then Levitt Bernstein had worked on proposals for the same Victorian building, at one point proposing two buildings of four and six storeys to provide 19 residential units, gallery space and workspace. Those plans were later abandoned.
Redevelopment ambitions for Peckham Square have accumulated across a decade and several practices, none of which have yet reached construction. A planning application for Peckham Square will be submitted at a later date, Southwark has confirmed.
