This project is commended in the 2023 AR House awards. Read about the full shortlist here The fact that architects tend to flock together when it comes to
London City Island in the Leamouth Peninsula was developed by EcoWorld Ballymore.
- Credit: Gordon Shrigley
Architect Gordon Shrigley stumbled across London City Island in the Leamouth Peninsula during lockdown, and has given this newspaper his view of the kooky development.
A Covid-19 lockdown cycle tour of Canning Town found me at the Leamouth Peninsula, which has recently been redesigned from the ground up by Glenn Howells Architects.
To celebrate the reinvention of the peninsula, developer EcoWorld Ballymore has renamed it London City Island - which given it isn’t actually an island and is six miles from the City of London, is a good example of up-marketing.
Architect Gordon Shrigley analyses the recently completed Hackney Gardens project
- Credit: Benedict Luxmoore
Architect Gordon Shrigley takes a look at how building materials can showcase an area s varied history and analyses the recently completed Hackney Gardens project.
To design a new part of a city requires the diligent architect to consider whether to enhance what already exists or to demolish and start again.
Cities, on the whole, come to be not by the imposition of a grand masterplan, but mainly through happenstance. All cities are the result of many competing hands, each with a unique view.
The architectural character of Hackney, for instance, is the product of 500 years, give or take, of the competing interests of Georgian nobility, Victorian capitalism, local democracy and more recently, the direct result of a housing shortage that has caused us to increasingly build dwellings as short-term investment vehicles rather than long-term homes.