Eat Street, Westfield White City

Architen Landrell Associates Ltd., Chepstow, Monmouthshire, United Kingdom

The canopy at Eat Street, Westfield, is a 16-bay canopy that provides cover and protects the shopping and eating area of the new WSL White City project. The area, which houses the main restaurants, cafés and bars, is one of the busiest streets within the complex. It needed protection from the weather but also needed to keep its light and open-air feeling. The team chose to use Gore™ Tenara®, a PTFE-based fabric that offers 30 or 40 percent light transmission.

The client’s canopy requirements were clear: it needed to stretch the full length of the street and project across the street span to provide maximum coverage. The outdoor feeling of the whole shopping center needed to be retained so it was important to provide a fabric with high light transmission values.

The installation is the largest Tenara fabric structure in Europe, covering nearly 2,000 square meters. Due to the compressed schedule toward the end of the Westfield six-year build, the street became busy with other contractors. As a result, the entire installation—a period of two months—was performed at night with multiple cranes and cherry pickers. Working nights also helped with access issues caused by the narrowness of the street itself. Cherry pickers and scissor lifts were adapted to take up minimal space and to speed up the installation process. The tight deadline was a challenge for the team and required hard work, dedication and attentive project management.