Encouraged by the 2019 Pilot, a team of current and previous warehouse tenants launched a competition to find a design for the Pavilion – a design that reflected the unique characteristics of the Warehouse District and that would create a focal point for the space.

The open call got more attention than was planned, when it received criticism from leading architects for not including an adequate design fee. Open to the feedback, the team updated the competition terms and three of the vocal critics converted into advocates - volunteering as judges for the competition.

The competition received international attention, resulting in166 designs submitted from all over the world. The winner was selected by a panel of leading architects and established figures from the Warehouse District and Tottenham (with additional weighting from an online community vote). 

Explore all 166 design submitted, alongside the winning and shortlisted concept in the Designer's Gallery below.

Covid-19 and the Lockdowns impacted on the original timeline (postponing the build until 2021). The self-build event was originally selected to be a part of the London Festival of Architecture 2020, until it become a digital festival in June 2020. Instead of a physical event, a series of podcasts were recorded with leading architectural platform KooZA/rch, featuring warehouse tenants, artists, architects and industry figures as part of #LFAdigital2020.

The delay caused by the lockdowns created additional space to run a series of co-design workshops with local residents, creating ideas for wider activity on the site. Over the summer and early autumn of 2020, a series of seven co-design workshops were held on the site and online. Each focusing on a different theme. All ideas were captured in a Tottenham Pavilion Padlet, heavily influencing how the project developed. The Padlet is still live and continually collecting new ideas.