Bluewater Shopping Centre

Kent

Designed by Eric Kuhne and Benoy Architects, Bluewater is an out of town shopping centre, located in Greenhithe, Kent. Opened on 16 March 1999, it is owned by four major UK institutions, Prudential plc and PRUPIM (35%), Lend Lease Europe Ltd (30%), the Lend Lease Retail Partnership (25%) and Hermes (10%).

Situated on a 240-acre (97 ha) plot in a former chalk quarry, the centre has a sales floor area of 154,000 m² (1,600,000 ft²) over two levels, making it the second largest shopping centre in the UK after Gateshead’s MetroCentre. The floor plan is a triangular shape with 330 stores, including 3 anchors, 40 cafés and restaurants, and a 13-screen cinema. The centre employs 7,000 and serves over 27 million visitors a year.

Lerch Bates provided consulting services upon the circulation and vertical transportation aspects of the scheme. The work included some original research into the volume of goods and amount of delivery vehicles a shopping centre of this scale would likely be subjected to.