Marco Polo House

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Marco Polo House is a large marble- and glass-clad office building at 346 Queenstown Road facing Battersea Park in the London Borough of Wandsworth. It was built in 1987, to a design by postmodernist architect Ian Pollard.

It was originally home to British Satellite Broadcasting (BSB) television in the late 1980s, and shares its name with the Marcopolo satellites used by its first owner. Part of the building was also used by The Observer newspaper. When BSB merged with Sky to form BSkyB the new company retained the lease, and in 1993 it also became home to shopping channel QVC, whose studios and offices are based there.

The building was also used as the offices for another ill-fated broadcaster, ONdigital, the UK's first digital terrestrial television broadcaster from 1998. The company was re-launched in 2001 as ITV Digital.

Marco Polo House is split into two blocks, covering 157,357 sq ft (14,618.9 m²). It can be seen on trains to and from Victoria station.

[edit] Possible demolition

Following the sale of the freehold to a Russian consortium in 2006 for more than £60m, QVC has decided not to renew its lease when it expires in 2012. The channel is looking for alternative location for its 500 head office staff, including several Northern cities.

It is expected that Marco Polo house will subsequently be demolished, and the site it occupies redeveloped as a significantly larger residential and office scheme, potentially up to 14 storeys high.