Monday, December 20, 2021
Have your buzzword bingo card ready as you read today's post.
vibrant iconic definitive experience destination unparalleled wellbeing distinctive unique best-in-class characterful premium immersive visionary dazzling historic sustainable nexus world-class hypermixity
Walking along the South Bank past Blackfriars station I spotted these hoardings.
Hmm, I thought, "the world's first fossil fuel-free major mixed use development", chinny reckon. You don't just knock down two Brutalist 1970s office blocks and replace them with 650 flats, more offices and a hotel without letting rip some carbon somewhere. It turns out the buildings are only intending to be "net zero carbon in operation" using a "5th generation energy network" driven by "electricity from renewable sources", but marketing never lets full disclosure get in the way of a good strapline.
A separate hoarding showed what the new Bankside Yards development would look like, which is a forest of towers beside the railway line including one particularly tall one. It doesn't include the slanty one on the right-hand side of the image, but once you give planning permission for one such monster a cluster inevitably arises.
Then I fired up the website, and I have rarely seen quite so much mindlessly excessive developerspeak all in one place. This quote sums up the sheer bolxness of it all.
Bankside Yards ‘hypermixity’ of uses will contribute actively to the local community and economy. And its location at a nexus of London’s multi-modal transport network will encourage green and active travel, improving wellbeing and air quality.
As far as I can tell nobody has ever used the word hypermixity before, and for good reason. I'm guessing it means a mixed-used development that's considerably more mixed-used than usual, but it smacks of a desperate attempt to try to make the project sound more exciting and thus flog more flats. The hypermix concept has also been overused within the website.
hypermixity
• An unprecedented hypermixed destination.
• A hypermixed landmark development designed for London's future.
• Bankside Yards is set to become an exceptional place that contributes positively to everyone who lives and works there and experiences its incredible hypermixed offering.
The site is so full of this kind of material that I've been able to classify it into three lists which I hope sum up the vacuousness that's on offer.
lies and exaggerations
• Bankside Yards is everything you could ever imagine.
• This is urban riverside living at its most vibrant.
• London’s definitive cultural neighbourhood.
• The most central riverside location in London.
• A £2.5 billion investment completing the revitalisation of the Thames’ South Bank.
• An iconic new destination, completing the last stretch of South Bank’s cultural ribbon.
• Experience all kinds of life in London’s definitive cultural neighbourhood.
• An unparalleled commercial, residential, wellbeing and retail destination.
• Travelling in and out of Bankside Yards is effortless.
• Residents have every shop they need for day-to-day living.masturbatory hyperbole
• A single 5* hotel sits within this development, enabling it to own the location and deliver a distinctive urban-resort experience to visitors from all over the world.
• A remarkable renewal is taking place of a lost city intersection on the South Bank of London’s River Thames.
• Dazzling architecture, art-and-designer retail, and cultural experiences.
• A best-in-class team pooling expertise from some of the most admired developments worldwide.
• Work life, home life and culture in a unique modern neighbourhood.
• This will be a premium living experience, creatively executed.
• A highly connected urban hub that brings London together.
• World-class hypertech workspaces, adaptable to any brand.
• Wide-ranging amenities meet the real world needs of residents and enrich the lives of experience seeking visitors.
generic bolx
• Bold visionary placemaking.
• Distinctive, inviting and independent.
• Ambitious modern design complements heritage architecture.
• Where people, business and the environment can thrive.
• Riverside meeting place, historic cultural open space and 5* urban resort.
• Giving visitors an alternative and immersive leisure and retail experience.
• An imaginative public realm that invites people to pause and participate.
• Quality streets and settings, with new landscaped spaces open to all, extend the appeal of this riverside development.
• Looking to the future with sustainable initiatives and affordable housing, whilst honouring the past and historic legacy of the site.
• The heritage backbone of the development, the arches act as a characterful backdrop to the surrounding public realm, outdoor art and other cultural activities and are a vibrant reminder of the location’s past.
The creative studio who get paid for writing this stuff are also responsible for the marketing blitz on the Greenwich Peninsula, which explains a lot but excuses nothing. But their mangled prose does demonstrate the endless flexibility of the English language in generating meaningless buzzphrases to promote a new development, a verbal battering which is taking place at innumerable sites across the country.
Less hypermixity and more hype, that's Bankside Yards.
