Glazed and pale-panelled dockside buildings behind three preserved cranes on the Isle of Dogs, the waterside setting of The Point

The Point, Greenwich View Place. Shackerley SureClad granite rainscreen and louvres. Isle of Dogs, London E14.

The team behind Dmitro Development delivered the natural-granite rainscreen and granite-faced louvres at The Point, a purpose-built data centre beside Millwall Inner Dock, for design-and-build main contractor Metnor Construction.

01 · Millwall Inner Dock and its preserved cranes, the waterside setting of The Point.

Data centre

At a glance

Package: Granite rainscreen and granite-faced louvres
Role: Design-responsible granite cladding subcontractor
Main contractor: Metnor Construction Ltd
Location: Greenwich View Place, Isle of Dogs
Delivered: 2016 to 2017

The Point replaced low-rise offices on a constrained dockside plot at Greenwich View Place, beside Millwall Inner Dock, and became the first major part of the Greenwich View campus for client TH Real Estate. Metnor Construction built it design-and-build, and the team's package was the stone that wraps its elevations.

The Point's entrance elevation on a sunny day, pale grey granite panels framing tall blue-glazed bays above low louvre bands, with young trees and a paved street in front

02

Pale granite frames the glazing along the entrance elevation.

Light granite frames each glazed bay.

Close view of large pale speckled granite panels around dark horizontal and vertical louvre openings beneath a projecting soffit, with blue glazing above and a dark brick plinth below

03

Large pale granite panels set out around the louvre openings at street level.

The granite package

01Shackerley SureClad natural granite, mechanically fixed on an aluminium bracket-and-rail system
02Granite-faced louvres within the stone elevations
03Specified behind the stone: 16 mm cement board, DuPont Tyvek Reflex membrane and 80 mm Kingspan Kooltherm K15 insulation
04Vapour-control and EPDM interfaces, fire barriers, cappings and closures

The stone

Two granites, 3,425 pieces of stone.

The elevations pair a light granite, OS05, with a dark granite, RV03, for contrasting elements: roughly 1,800 m² of OS05 and 130 m² of RV03, cut into 3,425 pieces. The light granite is 20 mm and 40 mm thick, the dark 30 mm.

More than 1,400 granite louvre blades sit within the stone, so the louvres read as part of the granite elevations rather than as a separate system.

The Point's long glazed dockside range in a white frame with dark louvre bands at walkway level, an elevated glazed link crossing to a white office building standing on piles in the dock

04

The dockside range, its glazed bays set in a pale frame, linked to the office building on the water.

The Point's glazed range seen across the water, set in a white frame along a quay, with a white office building on piles in the dock to the right

05

The same range from across the water, the office building on piles to the right.

Greenwich View Place, beside Millwall Inner Dock

The plot sits on the edge of Millwall Inner Dock. The scheme kept an existing office building on the water and joined it to the new range with an elevated link. Tower Hamlets approved the revised plans in March 2016.

Aerial view of the Isle of Dogs with the Thames and Canary Wharf towers beyond, The Point's dockside site highlighted in red beside Millwall Inner Dock — The Isle of Dogs from the air, The Point's dockside site marked in red.

Site plan of the Greenwich View Place campus with its buildings labelled, The Point shaded along the dockside boundary — Site plan of Greenwich View Place, with The Point along the dockside boundary.

A white office building on piles over the dock, with a piling rig and hoarding on the plot beside it and a dark glazed office block behind — Works under way behind hoarding on the dock edge, beside the office building on the water.

High view over The Point's long glazed range in a white frame along the quay, an elevated glazed link crossing to a white office building on the dock, with preserved cranes at the water's edge

09

The elevated link meeting the office building on the dock, seen from above.

Where the package stopped

The stone, not the glass.

The granite rainscreen and louvres were one package within Metnor Construction's design-and-build contract. The glazing was a separate package: Visual Concept Ltd installed the curtain wall using Senior Architectural Systems' SF52 curtain-wall and SD door systems.

The structural frame and the building services were delivered by others.