On Tuesday night, the industry’s leading lights gathered at Grosvenor House to celebrate the best of the best in property including the inaugural three inductees into the Property Week Hall of Fame.
Tony Pidgley - Berkeley Group
“Simply London’s biggest and best developer of new homes,” declares one industry heavyweight. “He was still buying up sites at the depth of the recession, knowing London would come good again.”
Tony Pidgley’s uncanny ability to read the market correctly has served him well over the years, enabling him to liquidate assets ahead of the late 1980s housing crash, move into the booming city centre market in the 1990s and pull back from volume housebuilding in 2004 ahead of the nancial crisis.
As well as driving outstanding development in central London, Pidgley’s Berkeley Group was also prescient to push into new areas in the capital, with the Royal Arsenal Riverside scheme in Woolwich; the regeneration of Woodberry Down in Hackney; and a deal to develop 3,500 homes in Newham.
“I care passionately about the product that we do,” says Pidgley. “I think housebuilding should be a force for good; property should be a force for good.”
Irvine Sellar - Sellar Property
Few have faced the sort of obstacles Irvine Sellar did with The Shard, as he himself acknowledged in a Property Week interview in 2012:
“You can call it an accident, call it luck, call it a miracle – a lot of things happened with this project without which it might never have happened. But you have to recognise these things and take those opportunities.”
Take them Sellar did and today, the elegant Renzo Piano-designed edifice stands as soaring testament to his vision. The ‘vertical village’ has also become the beating heart of the burgeoning London Bridge Quarter – as he always said it would.
No wonder one of the senior industry gures who nominated him described him thus: “Impossible to ignore, a fighter who’s tough as old boots.”
In his own words: “Let’s hope what I have achieved is going to be an inspiration. Don’t give up, fight against the odds and there will be a few more winners in the years to come.”
Sir Stuart Lipton - Lipton Rogers
Developments Hailed by Chelsfield supremo Elliott Bernerd as an “architectural mentor”, Sir Stuart Lipton set the bar high with seminal 1980s and 90s schemes such as Broadgate, Stockley Park and Chiswick Park.
And he has raised it again with his ambitious vision for Silvertown, which is set to transform a 62-acre tract of derelict land in east London, and 22 Bishopsgate, the 1.4m sq ft tower poised to rise from the ashes of the Pinnacle in 2019.
The projects, tackling one of the last great former industrial sites in London and creating the tallest building in the City, are testament to his ambition.
“His ability to handle very complex development schemes is legendary,” attests one industry gure. “Stuart never stopped seeking perfection.” Indeed, even now Lipton’s passion for what he does is palpable.
“Come ride with me on the cusp of a new world, of tech, of people, of placemaking and of fun,” he told guests at the Property Awards.
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