North Greenwich Sculptural Screen

The North Greenwich Sculptural Screen wraps around London Underground exhaust vents and a fire escape, redefining these utilitarian structures as a sculptural landmark. Rising 14 meters, the enclosure is clad in perforated and corrugated metal panels, a material treatment that simultaneously conceals and reveals. The surface sharpens and blurs with shifting light: in daylight, the volume softens to a veil-like presence; at night, it collaborates with digital media projections and the glow of the city to become a public gathering point.

Its relationship with the adjacent elevated park, The Tide, further intensifies its dialogue with the city. While The Tide is curvilinear and solid, projecting continuity and weight, the screen is angular and translucent, offering a counterpoint of sharpness and lightness. Together they compose a visual duet—expansive and introverted, outward and restrained.

The enclosure is more than a visual marker. Within its folds, the architects integrated a café and public restrooms, turning infrastructural necessity into a civic amenity. What might once have been a marginal technical site has been reimagined as a node of everyday exchange, an “urban interstice” activated by design.

This duality—commanding yet delicate, present yet recessive—defines the project’s identity. Positioned between the O2 Arena and North Greenwich Station, it greets thousands of visitors daily while also retreating into the visual rhythm of its surroundings. By oscillating between concealment and revelation, Neiheiser Argyros has given infrastructure a rhythm akin to breath.

The project was delivered through interdisciplinary collaboration: AKT II as structural engineer, AECOM for MEP and lighting design, Cimolai as steel fabricator, and Gross. Max as landscape designer, with Mace as main contractor. Commissioned by Knight Dragon in partnership with London Underground, the project suggests a new vision of public space—where even the most technical components of the city can be reframed as cultural and civic landmarks.