Haworth Tompkins' Wembley precast facade wins Façade Innovation Award

Haworth Tompkins' Wembley North East Lands scheme, the two buildings known as Luna and Solar next to Wembley Stadium, has won the Façade Innovation Award at the Tall Buildings Awards, the practice announced on 29 October.

The award recognises exterior envelope systems that push the boundaries of materials, technologies or structural design in high-rise architecture, Haworth Tompkins said. The organiser, Tall Buildings Media Ltd, describes the awards as a celebration of excellence and innovation within the tall buildings sector.

Designed for Quintain, the scheme provides 769 homes across two buildings, NE02 (Solar) and NE03 (Luna). Haworth Tompkins' award announcement describes all 769 as build-to-rent homes, while its own topping-out report said the project included more than 100 affordable homes. Contractor John Sisk & Son put the build-to-rent total at 282 homes in Luna and a further 383 in Solar.

The facade

The facade uses precast concrete panels with texture, depth and relief designed to capture light and shadow, according to Haworth Tompkins. The practice said panel families were rationalised and repeated to simplify manufacture, transport and installation.

The innovation the award cites is the integration of balcony supports directly into the face of the precast panels, developed with Eckersley O'Callaghan, Techrete and Sapphire Balconies.

Haworth Tompkins said this removed the conventional structural penetrations through the facade at the slab edge. That in turn allowed a continuous firestop detail, simpler waterproofing and the removal of the repeated thermal bridging and thermal breaks normally needed at balcony connections.

Finishes were reviewed and benchmarked through site visits, mock-ups and on-site testing, the practice said.

The organiser's 2026 shortlist listed the entry as "Eckersley O'Callaghan: Wembley North East Lands", alongside entries from Aliva UK, GRID Architects and Techrete, whereas Haworth Tompkins announced the win for the project as a whole. The practice refers to the event as the Tall Building Awards; the organiser calls it the Tall Buildings Awards.

The numbers

At the February 2024 topping out, Haworth Tompkins reported 1,802 offsite-manufactured facade panels used across the two buildings, and said the design allowed each of the 752 balconies to be installed within minutes. Sisk says the clip-on balcony system was deployed for the first time on this scheme.

The practice's project page says the precast facade, developed with Techrete, uses over 30% less embodied carbon than a typical brick/SFS facade. In February 2022, when Haworth Tompkins said it was working with Quintain on the scheme, the practice said the design targeted close to 500 kg CO2e/m2 of embodied carbon for life cycle modules A1-A5, in line with UKGBC and LETI targets.

Some 22,000 cubic metres of concrete were poured, with the lowest embodied carbon to date, according to the topping-out report. The project also used 972 bathroom pods and was Quintain's largest construction contract signed to date at Wembley Park, according to the same report.

Building	Build-to-rent homes
Luna (NE03)	282
Solar (NE02)	383

Source: John Sisk & Son

The project team

Sisk was main contractor, with Elliott Wood (NE02) and Campbell Reith (NE03) as structural engineers, Jensen Hughes as fire engineer and Buro Happold on sustainability, according to the architect's project credits.

Sisk and Quintain announced completion of Luna on 4 April 2025, with Solar to follow later that year. Sisk says Solar was one of London's first successful Gateway 3 approvals under the Building Safety Act.

Ger Hayes, MD, Sisk, said: "Delivering Luna is another major achievement for Sisk as we mark over 20 years in partnership with Quintain at Wembley Park."

Haworth Tompkins described North East Lands in 2022 as the next major phase of Quintain's 10 million sq ft mixed-use masterplan at Wembley Park. Construction was due to start on site that year with completion set for 2025.

The two buildings' main residential entrances face each other across a public square, and the scheme is set around Union Park, a seven-acre public space the practice describes as the first new public park in Brent for 100 years.