Lewisham X Fortnite
- Brand
- Landsec
- Year
- 2024
- Objective
- Awareness
- Industry
- Finance
- Mechanic
- Racing & Sports
- Platform
- In-Game
- Agency
- Preloaded
Objective
Landsec U+I needed to bring its proposed masterplan for Lewisham Town Centre to people who don't turn up to exhibitions or read planning documents — teenagers and young families — and make the scale of the redevelopment tangible before lodging a planning application. The activation had to slot into a broader public consultation programme and run alongside an esports event already planned for the shopping centre itself.
Solution
You open Fortnite, load a custom island, and drop in by airship straight onto the site of the future Lewisham Town Centre — no tutorial, just the moves you already know. Split into teams, you race against the clock through the rebuilt streets and squares, grinding along rails, riding air jets and launching off jump pads to grab more balloons than the other side before time runs out. Because you're covering the whole layout at speed, by the end of a round you've got a feel for where everything sits and how the new development knits into the existing town centre. Matches ran on screens set up in the shopping centre atrium and in the nearby consultation space, and afterwards you could walk over and put questions straight to the development team.
- 1
The player enters a custom island inside standard Fortnite, accessed from the Lewisham Shopping Centre atrium or the No.25 consultation space during free sessions run by Esports Youth Club; the interface and controls are unchanged from the base game, with no separate tutorial.
- 2
Players split into teams for a timed competitive round, matching the esports-activation format of the event.
- 3
Each round opens with a skydive from an airship above the development site, giving the player an aerial view of the full masterplan — new blocks, the pedestrian street, green space, and how the site connects to the surrounding city — before landing.
- 4
On the ground, the player runs through a simplified architectural model of the future town centre's streets and public spaces, collecting balloons scattered across the area against the clock and against the rival team.
- 5
Traversal tools — grind rails, air jets, wind tunnels, and trampolines — let the player cover ground quickly, launching, sliding along buildings, and jumping across the site; repeated use of these routes builds the player's sense of the district's layout and scale.
- 6
The round ends when the timer runs out and balloon counts are compared between teams; afterward, the player can talk to the Landsec team, ask questions, and view detailed plans at the adjacent No.25 exhibition, with the game serving as an entry point to the consultation rather than an end in itself.
- 7
Beyond the launch weekend, the same experience was available at scheduled drop-in sessions at No.25 over the following weeks.
