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Sainsbury's Greenwich
Sainsbury's Greenwich in September 2010
General information
Architectural style	Futurist[1]: 159  Sustainable[2]
Address	55 Bugsby's Way, Greenwich Peninsula, SE10[3]
Town or city	Royal Borough of Greenwich, London
Country	United Kingdom
Coordinates	51°29′23.23″N 0°0′59.72″E / 51.4897861°N 0.0165889°E / 51.4897861; 0.0165889
Opened	September 1999[4]
Closed	24 June 2015[5]
Demolished	2016
Cost	£13 million[6]
Client	Sainsbury's
Technical details
Floor area	55,000 sq ft (5,100 m2)[1]: 157
Design and construction
Architect(s)	Chetwoods Architects[7]
Other information
Public transit access	London Buses: Route 108,[8][9] route 129,[10] route 132,[11] route 161,[12] route 472,[13] route 486[14] Underground: North Greenwich (0.92 miles; 1.48 km)[15] Overground: Westcombe Park (0.39 miles; 0.63 km)[15] DLR: Cutty Sark (1.31 miles; 2.11 km)[15]

Sainsbury's, Greenwich, also known as the Sainsbury's Millennium Store,^[16] was a Sainsbury's supermarket building at 55 Bugsby's Way, Greenwich Peninsula, London. Opening in 1999 as Sainsbury's flagship store, the building design incorporated environmentally conscious features and gained critical acclaim, being shortlisted for the 2000 Stirling Prize. It was billed as "the first Green supermarket in the world".^[17]

In 2014, after an application for listed status failed, planning permission to demolish the store was approved by Greenwich London Borough Council with Sainsbury's moving to a new site in Charlton. Demolition began in 2016, and an IKEA store was built on the site.

Sainsbury's bid to build a supermarket on the Greenwich Peninsula was won amid "fierce competition" from other supermarket chains.^[1]: 121 The site, a former sports ground,^[18]: 112 was a prestigious one at the time,^[1]: 153 since it was close to the Greenwich Millennium Village and the Millennium Dome.^{[1]: 154 [19]} Tesco had commissioned a design from Aukett Architects and Asda had a design made by Grimshaw Architects; Morrisons had also submitted a design.^[1]: 154 The original Sainsbury's design, by Chetwoods Architects, was circular and designed so that it could be built anywhere on a north-south axis; it was initially thought by the firm to be too eccentric but was presented to the Sainsbury's board who unanimously chose it, believing it to be the most likely succeed in competition with other supermarkets' designs.^[1]: 162

Sunday Business reported in May 1998 that Asda had initially been chosen, but that the deal had "foundered" and Sainsbury's was then selected.^[1]: 156 Sainsbury's bought the site for more than £30 million.^[1]: 157

Sainsbury's winning bid led to scrutiny from the Conservative Party in the House of Commons, led by Tim Yeo, the shadow minister responsible for planning.^{[1]: 155–156} The scrutiny was due to Lord Sainsbury being a Labour Party donor and having a close relationship with Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott.^[1]: 156

The Greenwich store was designed to minimise its environmental impact and give a more pleasant shopping experience.^[20] Dino Adriano, Sainsbury's CEO, said the building marked "a watershed in supermarket architecture".^[21] The store was designed by Paul Hinkin of Chetwood Associates,^[20] and helped the architecture practice "[become] noticeable on the architectural horizon".^[22] Other companies involved in the project include Max Fordham & Partners as concept engineers, Oscar Faber Partnership as services engineers, WSP as structural engineers, and RGCM as construction managers.^[1]: 160

The supermarket covered 55,000 sq ft (5,100 m²), including 33,000 sq ft (3,100 m²) of trading space.^[1]: 157 Hinkin described the building as "a simple rectangular plan" with six internal columns, making it "ideally suited for a wide range of uses".^[2] The store was designed to be "a naturally lit and ventilated food hall surrounded and protected by earth banks".^[18]: 113 This was done with a saw-tooth roof section which let daylight in and

By utilising daylight instead of artificial lighting and having combined heat and power (CHP), Sainsbury's Greenwich consumed 50% less energy than a conventionally-designed supermarket.^[3] Wind turbines and solar panels were installed to provide renewable energy,^[6] intending to generate enough to power the store's signs overnight.^[23]: i In reality, there was often not enough sunlight or wind power to have the signs permanently illuminated and they were later connected to the National Grid.^[1]: 161 The store's petrol station was the first Sainsbury's building to be built with solar panels; since panels were expensive at the time, none of the company's other buildings had solar panels installed until 2011.^[24] Energy-saving measures were predicted to save £60,000 per year;^[1]: 159 it was intended that, by 2001, energy-saving and sustainable features could be evaluated and replicated in other stores.^{[23]: 8–9, 14}

The building's sides were covered with earth to increase insulation, although this had to be altered in the final designs to allow for emergency exits.^[1]: 160 The landscaping around the store was done by the Woodland Trust.^[3] It included various habitat types including woodland and meadow areas and a wetland pond and reed bed which used recycled water from the building's roof.^[1]: 158

The entrance lobby was created from recycled airplane parts and car tyres and wall panels in the toilets were made from recycled plastic bottles.^[22]

The building's environmental credentials did not go unchallenged, especially due to the design's perceived car-centricity. A report by the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy said that the supermarket "cater[ed] to the car" and highlighted its location next to a 300-space free car park.^[25] An article in The Evening Standard noted that "for all the oil by-products saved by the panels in the nappy-changing rooms, rather more will come out of the thousands of exhaust pipes that will come and go everyday", and Friends of the Earth said the building was "repeating one of the worst mistakes of the 20th century in producing a car-generating high street-destroying superstore".^{[1]: 110–111}

Sainsbury's responded that people using cars to go shopping was the current reality, and that using other forms of transport was something that would have to be introduced gradually.^[1]: 158

The building scored a perfect 31 out of 31 environmental rating, the highest score ever for a retail building, and was the first supermarket and first British building to receive an 'excellent' BREEAM rating.^[6][20] It was recognised as "the greenest supermarket building in the world" at the time,^[22] and described by architecture critic Robert Park as "the most energy-efficient supermarket building we have ever seen".^[2]

The store's environmentally friendly features were often covered by the press,^[1]: 162 sometimes heavily relying on Sainsbury's own promotional materials.^[1]: 154

Sainsbury's Greenwich received a number of awards for its architecture and sustainable design. It was awarded 'millennium product' status by the Design Council on 14 December 1999.^[18]: 118 In 2000, it was shortlisted for the RIBA Stirling Prize and won the the RIBA Journal Sustainability Award.^[22][26] The store also won the Design Museum's Design Sense Award, the Retail Week Store Design of the Year 2000, and Channel 4's Building of the Year: People's Choice 2000.^[22]

Sainsbury's Greenwich was opened on 14 September 1999^[18]: 118 by Jamie Oliver.^[20][4]

The store became one of 20 Sainsbury's shops in South East London to take part in what the company described as "the UK's first urban composting trial" to dispose of food waste that could not be donated.^[23]: 12 Sainsbury's reported that the Greenwich store reduced its refuse collection from weekly to up to every three weeks.^[23]: 12

In her 2008 thesis on supermarket architecture, Audrey Kirby suggested that the Greenwich store had "not fulfilled its much publicised potential" as a benchmark for supermarket design since convential supermarkets continued to be built in the years afterwards, leaving it "a one-off" venture.^[1]: 153

In 2009, Sainsbury's Greenwich was one of the company's nine initial stores to install electric vehicle charging points; The Evening Standard said that this was "a boost" to Mayor of London Boris Johnson's push to promote electric vehicle use in London.^[27]

In 2010, Jacob Zuma visited the store during his state visit to the UK.^[17][28] Zuma had requested a tour,^[29] and was accompanied by Justin King (Sainsbury's CEO) and Hilary Benn (the Environment Secretary).^[28]

In February 2012, Sainsbury's announced its plans to leave its Greenwich store, move to a new, larger site nearby, and lease the vacant building to a different, non-supermarket retailer.^[26] The company said it was "looking to build a new flagship environmental store" and that new environmental technologies could be used if it built a new store.^[26] Hinkin, the store's architect, said that the building should be used, as intended, for food retailing, and disagreed with Sainsbury's that the store's environmental features had been surpassed.^[26] Some architects and designers suggested that the building's sustainability was compromised by its specific design as a food retailer, and that it should have been designed with reuse in mind.^[2][26]

In November 2013,^[30] Hinkin started a petition against the building's demolition, claiming that it represented "an act of vandalism".^[31] Hinkin asked for help from the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), but said they had "sat on their hands"; RIBA president Stephen Hodder called the supermarket "a landmark of its time" and said he would be sad to see it be demolished, but concluded that it was a decision for the local council to make.^[32] The petition gained support from hundreds of people including architects George Ferguson and Angela Brady,^[7] and Green Party leader Natalie Bennett.^[6]

In February 2014, after IKEA had applied for permission to demolish the store and build a larger one in its place,^[33] The Twentieth Century Society submitted an application to English Heritage for Sainsbury's Greenwich to be grade II* listed.^[7] This would have made it both the first listed supermarket in the UK and the youngest building to ever be listed.^[7] Catherine Croft, the Society's director, said that demolition would be "a tragic waste of energy and resources" and result in the loss of "the most innovative retail store to have been built in the UK in the last 50 years".^[7]

According to Building Design, IKEA's application for demolition was "expected to be recommended for approval" by Greenwich London Borough Council.^[33] In March 2014, Greenwich Council's planning board approved the IKEA's proposal by five votes to two, while saying that the store's demolition was "unfortunate".^[6]

https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/listing-bid-made-in-desperate-attempt-to-stop-sainsburys-demolition

The store's last day open was on 24 June 2015, closing for the final time at 6pm.^[5]

• Sainsbury's, Camden - another Sainsbury's supermarket which was grade II listed in 2019.