Cardinal Place Shopping Centre

Cardinal Place is less an actual shopping centre and more a covered area between buildings. But what this means is that you don’t get much of that mall feeling but instead it’s very light, open and airy.
There is a reasonable range of restaurants here, although they’re all British high street staples — Nando’s for example. But it’s clean uncluttered and stylish.
On a Thursday there is a food market here with a variety of street food offerings, which I think is the best time to visit and take your lunch up the escalator to the lawn. You’ll understand what I mean when you visit!

There’s no denying that there are some useful high street shops in this Victoria shopping centre, but what no one else has yet pointed out is that there are serious wind issues here. Honestly, some days the gusts shooting round the buildings here are enough to sweep you off your feet and you need to lean hard into the wind to make any headway. I know they are experimenting with various ways of dealing with this, including wind barriers and strange sculptural edifices to break up the wind corridor. It really does make you not want to linger here on a bad day though, which is not good news for the retailers.
They do have bands on in the summer though, which is quite a nice touch, and I’m sure it attracts shoppers to the area. The view through to Westminster Cathedral is very nice and well incorporated and certainly encouraged me to visit it for the first time. Despite the good range of shops it does feel strangely soulless here (although, I suppose so do most shopping centres). Even being partly outside doesn’t really save it.

I love that Cardinal Place has just enough of everything that you need in one place.
I know it sounds lazy, but I only get 1 hour of lunch break and I’d rather not have to spend 20 minutes walking from shop to shop with little browsing time. Cardinal Place = problem solved!
Want a Birthday card? M&S will sort you out. Wrapping paper too.
Present? Thorntons Chocolates and L’Occitane — fab
Lunch? Boots (meal deal £3.50) or M&S (yum) — sweet
Clothes/​shopping spree? Topshop is 10seconds around the corner — awesome!
I sound a bit sad, but really this is a cool shopping centre when you are tight on time (or just really lazy)!
(Also — much as it annoyed me at first — you cannot smoke under there any more, so it’s clean too: D)

Since 2006 Cardinal Place has become a dramatic, almost iconic architectural landmark in the Victoria area of London.
The centre comprises three buildings connected by a dramatic sail-​shaped glass roof, enclosing a total of over million square feet in an open atrium. The buildings rest on rubber shock absorbers, as it is built directly over the District and Circle underground tunnels running to and from Victoria. The site mixes public open space (on several levels) with offices and residential accommodation, and has won awards for the level and quality of integration. It also incorporates a host of environmental technology and design features to reduce its carbon footprint.
Shops include a 40,000-sq ft Marks and Spencer as the anchor store, with other clothing vendors such as Zara, Topshop, L’Occitane and Hobbs. Restaurants include a Wagamama (see separate review), Zizzi and Nando’s. There’s a Ha bar (see also separate review — not recommended…). Together with the extisting shops in Victoria Street, this has provided a real (and much-​needed) retail boost to this part of London.
Whether you actually like the architecture depends on whether you like such uncompromising statements — approaching it from Victoria, the building certainly doesn’t seem bothered about respecting those around it, although they’ve been careful to incorporate a view of Westminster Cathedral into one of the arcades. But there’s no denying it adds drama to the Victoria streetscape.