Lewisham cinema work continues amid Gateway development

A major construction project in Lewisham town centre including a cinema, shops and hundreds of homes is taking further steps towards completion.

Lewisham Gateway’s final stage is seeing external detailing applied on a number of buildings over recent days and weeks.

As is often the case I’ve taken far more photos and videos than can be featured here, and so have created a Youtube page to highlight those. Click here to view a video.

The corner edifice closest to the High street is not great, and even more so given its prominence. It’s a case of throw whatever 10 year old cladding we had out back and see what sticks.

Well, it’s sticking alright, but it looks a dog’s dinner. A dog’s dinner brought up six hours after consumption.

Regurgitated Pedigree Chum sort of sums up random cladding. All sorts of colours in a rather unenticing ensemble. And liable to make one nauseas.

It also looks like random cladding is going onto the façade along Lewisham High Street.

This wasn’t on renders previously seen.

No one likes random cladding panels. No one. Don’t use them. Ever. It’s the laziest and most inept way to hide bulk and massing.

Strange and (not) beautiful

It’s such an odd development all round really. Perhaps the developer found a deal whereby the buy one type of cladding and got 17 free.

The above image shows what is probably the best frontage given it’s 1) not grey and 2) not randomised.

Though gold also features. Gold and grey is an odd combo. Though it did bring to mind this track, so not all bad.

Less grey and more black would have worked better. I mean really, who like dreary old grey cladding on a typical grey UK day? Miserable.

Muse are behind this development and housing tenure is build-to-rent. No, not those guys. Though some buildings may bring forth a Bellamy-esque squeal.

Roads here are chocka all day though at least when complete pedestrians can walk through a street through the site away from vehicles to reach Lewisham town centre.

It’s always been traffic clogged though as far back as I can remember. Before changes much of the site was a giant roundabout.

So far I’ve yet to see any retail unit plans so what shops, bars, restaurants etc remain a mystery.

The below image shows the former Citibank tower nearby which has seen a number of proposed conversions to residential flats come and go.

We can also see a development at Silver Street not covered too many times on this site poling up in the above photo. Though I did cover work back in 2021 not much has been shown since on here. That will see 141 homes.

As ever Lewisham continues to change and evolve by the the week, let alone month. Many complain but really, it’s zone 2 by excellent transport links. Little else can be expected. Whether the quality and massing of these builds is good enough is another question.

Next up is redevelopment of the shopping centre and then last month plans emerged that the Tesco supermarket would be rebuilt.

As stated before, for every photo posed here there’s about 10 on my hard drive.

I hope to create more videos interspersed with photos giving a greater glimpse into changes. Keep an eye on my Youtube channel.