Wickside

Our inspiration was a kind of urbanism that already exists in parts of Hackney Wick and Fish Island. It is an area famous for its yards, which are open by day and gated at night, and we’ve tried to incorporate the qualities of conviviality that are found in these shared spaces, creating an environment that fizzes with everyday ordinariness.

Some existing buildings will be retained and new streets, yards and warehouses will be added in, referencing the more haphazard, higgledy-piggledy streetscapes of London, in their scale and massing.

A palette of standard asphalt roadways, granite kerbs, concrete pavers and traditional road markings brokers the connection between this new environment and the authentic city around it.

In our public realm design, we used the canalside park as an organising device, opening up the scheme to the south, while forming a protective interface with the A12 urban motorway to the west. Within the park, we created special moments, such as triangular areas of grass, tipped slightly to the south, for hanging out and ground-level trampolines for kids to jump around on. We also formed a rich roofscape of public gardens, terraces and play areas, accessible to residents. One roof terrace, which is open to the public, has a bar on it.

Our re-use philosophy was to work with the site’s history, allowing the damaged brickwork of existing knocked-around structures to articulate the story of the site.

Although these buildings were not important heritage assets, being neither nationally nor locally listed, their retention provides continuity and an abode for shared memories of the former uses of the site.

One shed is turned into a restaurant, another becomes a gallery. Other existing buildings house mixed uses including apartments, creative workplaces, a public roof terrace and an artists’ foundry. A famous graffiti wall is preserved and becomes part of a café.

Reflecting the importance of our historical perspective in developing the design strategy for the site, jury member Dominique Alba commented, “It’s made of history,” when selecting Wickside as Overall Winner at the NLA Awards 2017.

The masterplan describes a vision of plentiful high-density housing with a range of typologies and an imaginative, 24-hour mix of uses and activity generators: creative business, a co-working operation, a market, shops, gallery, event space, restaurants, a brewery, a foundry and artists’ workshops.

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It is customary, in medium-density residential schemes, to design single, monolithic building types that occupy an entire city block, but here we are making up streetscapes with individual buildings that are distinct from each other. Inside they may be identical, but we can adjust floor heights, moderate window openings, syncopate rooflines to make the buildings subtly different from each other. It is the antithesis to the insensitive, block-scaled developments which often blight London’s regeneration.

Awarding the project Overall Winner at the 2017 New London Architecture Awards, jury member Riccardo Marini said, “It’s a proper piece of city,” and fellow juror Steve Kennard commented, “What is interesting about this project is that it mirrors what London did well in the past.”

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