Royal Docks
By Yulia Pak
On a brilliant afternoon in late October, a group of Placemaking Collective members were treated to a special tour of the Royal Docks, the largest regeneration area in London which is putting itself on the map as a growing creative waterside community.
Our amazing host Bethan James, a Senior Development Manager in the Royal Docks, took us around the expansive scheme that is bringing together unprecedented growth ambition, industrial heritage and creative and entrepreneurial spirit in a unique way. The walk-and-talk tour brought to life the Royal Docks strategic development plan with its closely aligned narratives of growth, investment, placemaking and design.
Built at an unprecedented scale in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as one of the largest enclosed docks in the world, today Royal Docks is one of the most exciting regeneration projects in London. Spanning over 480 hectares, with over 175 hectares of land in Greater London Authority ownership, the Royal Docks is also a designated Opportunity Area, and London's only Enterprise Zone. The scale of ongoing transformation and opportunity over the next 20 years is breath-taking: all Royal Docks development projects combined will bring forth over 40,000 jobs, including those in a first new shipyard on the Thames for over a century, along with 30,000 new homes and creative and community space. The area has retained its impressive maritime and industrial heritage, from preserved dockworkers' canteen to historic factories like Siemens and Tate & Lyle. As the area continues to reinvent itself, it attracts modern-day makers and entrepreneurs with inspiring workspaces dedicated to start-ups and SMEs- like the new Expressway.
The Royal Docks is too large- and too fascinating - an area to attempt to cover it all in one afternoon. We chose to focus the visit on the Western end with its line-up of exciting new projects, so our tour followed a circular loop from Royal Victoria Dock DLR station and back. The more build-up East end is home to Royal Albert Wharf, Royal Albert Dock with operating creative workspace, and warrants a separate tour to explore it all.
The vast expanse of water and its almost unheard-of (that is, in London) proximity is what strikes one on their first visit to the Royal docks. Bethan started the tour by taking us to the new Floating Garden. The newest addition to Royal Docks' famous watersports and wild swimming offer is a cleverly designed soft landscaped garden that brings people as close to the water as possible, in a unique and beautiful setting. Overall, 250 acres of water with incredible views is one of the key assets of the territory. Unsurprisingly, there is a Water strategy, developed as a part of the overall Place Strategy by the Royal Docks team, seeking to connect people with almost 12 miles of waterfront in safe and creative ways. There will be new and better crossing points and a new walking and cycling Dock Loop soon, watch this space!
As we walked along the dock edge to Silvertown Quays we approached a high bridge that while offering incredible views over the area, is simply inconvenient for pedestrians, buggy users and cyclists alike. Bethan shared the plans for a new footbridge to be built next to the Silver building to connect Victoria docks to the Customs House. Once the new bridge is in place the high bridge will stay, possibly becoming more of a visitor destination.
Other important changes shaping this end of the area include a new Crossrail station at Custom House for ExCeL, that will become a gateway to the area. Secondly, ExCel, the largest exhibition centre in the UK, recently got permission for Phase 3 to get even bigger and more competitive globally – not necessarily the most obvious fit for the area’s Place Strategy but there could still be synergies to establish. Another, perhaps more community-centric potential change currently considered by the Royal Docks team here is to work with ExCel to widen the dockage near it by incorporating more floating uses like a floaty walkway along the side to improve the look and the accessibility of the waterfront footpath.
Having reached Silvertown Quays, we visited the site of Silvertown, one of the most ambitious housing-led development schemes in the area to be delivered by Lendlease. Thanks to our host’s generous hospitality, the group was able to get inside the Millennium Mills, an imposing flour mill that has been derelict since the 1980s. Along with a Silo D, a Grade II listed, modernist grain silo, this incredibly photogenic building will be carefully restored and will form a focal point of a large-scale scheme delivering a total of 7 million ft2 of residential and commercial space. Interestingly, the scheme’s initial 40% share of affordable housing has recently been increased to 50%, reflecting an increasing need for affordable homes in Newham and in London at large.
Climbing quite a few flights of narrow stairs, we were rewarded with the most incredible bird-eye view over the entire territory of Docklands on a sunny day– an unforgettable experience!
The tour continued at the Expressway, a local creative businesses hub located underneath the Silvertown flyover. The newest addition to the area’s thriving creative ecosystem, the 120,000 sq ft start-up and SME hub was re-launched in its current form by General Projects just at the start of the pandemic but came out on the other side with an impressive 95% occupancy rate across their 122 business suites and 39 maker units. The building is complete with the bustling coffee shop by local coffee roasting company.
Next to the expressway, a meanwhile space under the flyover hosted one of the events of the Royal Docks’ debut placemaking festival Royal Docks Originals. We were lucky to catch a free multi-sensory performance and become a part of the immersive story about the place and its people.
After this impromptu and fun stop, we headed to the nearby Silver Building. This imposing brutalist concrete block was once the offices of industrial giant Carlsberg-Tetley and lay derelict for 15 years before Projekt re-furbished and reopened it as a home to dozens of creative businesses. However, Silver Building is a part of another transformative development scheme Thameside West and is in fact a meanwhile use. The building also houses a vision centre for Thameside West complete with fantastic models of this ambitious project which very appropriately bookended our tour of the Royal Docks.
