From wholesome beginnings as an agricultural hall on the site of a former vineyard to a tired, truck-clogged thoroughfare linking Kensington and Hammersmith, the Olympia in west London has been on a wild ride since it first opened its doors in 1886.
Over its 140-year history thousands of people and businesses have flocked this sprawling west London exhibition venue to show their wares; it has attracted performers including Rod Stewart and Jimi Hendrix and, in 1891, was flooded and filled with 100 gondolas for the world famous “Venice in London” event, which drew nearly five million visitors over its year-long run.
Having spent over a century being hailed as one of the UK’s leading venues of enterprise and entrepreneurial spirit, in recent decades Olympia had become a victim of its own success. What was once a two-hall set-up — the original Grand and Pillar Halls both having been built in 1885 — grew to occupy multiple buildings across an expansive site in a densely populated area of London. The tangle of its fourteen acres collided with modern day logistics.
The Pillar Hall …
BRENDAN BELL/PHOTIC20/20
By the turn of the millennium the future of this ageing venue, beleaguered by road closures, congestion and 700-truck queues, was highly uncertain.
There were short-lived plans in 2008 to convert the buildings into luxury homes, then the developers Yoo Capital swept in nearly a decade later with an altogether more daring idea for Olympia: stay true to its primary purpose and keep it running as an exhibition venue.
It could be done, the project team said, by opening the site up to the public and “embalming” the original halls with £1.3 billion worth of restaurants, bars, amenities and public spaces. There would be the biggest roof terraces in the country, swathes of new offices and a 200,000 sq ft on-site logistics centre. The site itself cost just shy of £300 million when Yoo purchased it in 2017 alongside a consortium of German investors.
The game-changing retail and public realm improvements are mere “embellishments”, smiles Lloyd Lee, a co-founder and managing partner of Yoo Capital, waving a casual hand around at the more than 2,000 workers on site on an exclusive tour of the project in its final stages of construction.
With those embellishments nearing completion, the new and improved Olympia is set to be unveiled later this year. This time, it will be open to everyone: a “people’s palace” says John Hitchcox, Lee’s fellow co-founder and chairman of Yoo Capital. What Hitchcox and Lee envision is a new chapter for the venue to see it through the next 140 years of its life.
It’s a tall order. So, can they do it?
The venue’s new canopy
BRENDAN BELL/PHOTIC20/20
What are the plans for the Kensington Olympia?
As far as Hitchcox is concerned, they don’t have a choice. “When you sign a contract to buy a building like Olympia, there is no turning around,” he says. “You are moving forward from that point onwards come hell or high water. Luckily, we have always had the support and following of a huge list of brands.”
Apart from the fact that the nearby Earls Court, which was built as a rival to Olympia in the 1930s, is no longer a competitor as it undergoes a (planning-dependent) redevelopment of its own, Hitchcox and Lee attribute much of the scheme’s success to the big name tenants who have backed it from the beginning — some before ground was even broken.
There is the 1,575-seat Harold Pinter Theatre, for example, the biggest to be built in London since 1976 — which will be operated by Trafalgar Entertainment, which already runs the Trafalgar Theatre in the West End and a host of regional venues. A 4,500-capacity music venue will be run by AEG, the live entertainment and sports operator behind the O2. The anchor hotel will be a 196-room, five-star Hyatt, while citizenM have the boutique hotel offer covered and occupiers including Sony and Samsung will be part of a wider ambition for Olympia to become a hub for digital content creation.
The theatre under construction
BRENDAN BELL/PHOTIC20/20
Not only do names like this ground the project in the eyes of the public, says Lee, but they offer a barometer for the developers themselves. “The minute you’ve got Hyatt or AEG saying ‘you guys are nuts’ well, then you think twice. But when they are saying ‘we’ll do it’, suddenly you have a momentum and a reason to deliver.”
How Heatherwick and SPPARC designs will ‘open’ the space up
Then there are the plans themselves. Bold designs by the UK practices Heatherwick Studio and SPPARC — including Heatherwick’s headline-grabbing undulating, glass roof canopy — have not just extended and diversified the events centre but have addressed some of the site’s major problems.
• Thomas Heatherwick: My war on the building ‘blandemic’ in cities
The on-site logistics centre effectively “disappears” much of the event traffic, says Lee, and has freed up the venue’s original multistorey car park, complete with a roof terrace as wide as Regent Street, while the presently unlovely Olympia Way will be pedestrianised.
Crucially, these spaces will be easily accessible after years of Olympia looming, fortress-like, over Kensington High Street, its 1km-long façade almost entirely impenetrable to anyone who didn’t have a ticket, apart from two measly metres on the corner at the entrance to Pizza Express.
“The mentality here for years has been to get customers in and keep the public out because they weren’t here to buy,” says Hitchcox. “Our approach has been the opposite, to open it up to the people and life.”
Once reopened, Olympia will go from being a business-hours only, 181-day-a-year venue to a 365-day-a-year venue open from 8am until midnight. Emberton Walk, a new street, will provide access right through the space, adorned with the Canvas, an 83m-long digital screen that will display immersive art.
The roof terrace for part of the new office space
BRENDAN BELL/PHOTIC20/20
The number of events staged across the site will jump from 225 a year to 700; there will be restaurants with a combined 4,000 seats; a 1,400-person capacity roof terrace; and new office spaces for 6,000 workers. All this will mean a colossal influx of people to this formerly forgotten area. Incipio Group will open four drinking and dining venues, including street food kitchens, a “rooftop retreat” called Lillie’s and a “noir-inspired Japanese restaurant and cocktail bar”.
“It will be like Las Vegas without the sin,” says Hitchcox.
Is everyone happy about that? Of course not.
In April last year, a flurry of complaints from local residents raised “significant concerns” over the potential for “noise, traffic and anti-social behaviour” in light of applications for late-night licences. Luckily for Yoo, Hammersmith & Fulham council did not share those concerns and the licences were granted.
Not all Olympia’s neighbours have been thrilled
BRENDAN BELL/PHOTIC20/20
When will Olympia be finished?
Olympia is being opened in phases, starting with an independent school, Wetherby Pembridge, last week, and continuing throughout 2026, which is Olympia’s 140th anniversary year. The theatre will open in early 2027.
• Design Museum chief: ‘Some people call me the Barbie guy’
As the project nears completion, Lee hopes concerned residents have started to recognise the benefits of what they will soon have on their doorsteps. “A weekend morning, walking the dog, having somewhere to hang out, have a coffee and enjoy this new public space with no need for a ticket,” he says.
Either way, the wheels are now firmly in motion and Olympia will be opened whether a few disgruntled residents can envision themselves grabbing coffee and baked goods on a lazy Saturday morning or not. “Olympia is a juggernaut,” says Hitchcox. “There is no stopping it. And we are humbly accepting the opportunity to sit in the driving seat for what is actually a very short period of time to update it.”