Architecture firm Dowen Farmer is hoping to build Portal Way in North Acton
If you’re a regular Deliveroo or Uber Eats user, you’re probably familiar with the term ‘dark kitchen’, which are basically restaurants without the dining room part that operate for delivery pickups only. These dark kitchens are dotted all over the city, normally in pretty unassuming spaces, like railway arch units. But now they could be put front and centre if Dowen Farmer gets its way.
The firm wants to build a giant 12-storey tower block to house 260 dark kitchens on the top 10 floors, from which food will be shuttled down to a public food hall via app ordering and “smart food lifts” at the bottom of the building. The designs also show a series of terraces inserted at different levels of the structure’s metal mesh facade, which does help to make it look slightly less menacing.
Dower Farmer has stated that the cube is “a new building typology looking to reinvent the way urban environments operate from a food development, delivery and production standpoint” and it’ll provide 1200 jobs for the local area, so we’ll just have to wait and see if it gets the go-ahead.
Stay in the loop…
Sign up to our drops & get us in your inbox.
We’ll be in your inbox every Wednesday at 11:30am.
Put the kettle on!
