Docklands heats up
The idea of a comprehensive strategy for the five thousand acres of London's obsolete docks seems to be evaporating. However, Geoffrey Rippon, when he met GLC and dockland borough leaders last week, put a strong case for legislation to set up a special executive and co-ordinating agency for the area. this seems a step towards something like a new town corporation designation, an idea whose advantages Rippon has mentioned in the past. But the £½ million Dockland Study, with its five chosen options for the area rejected by the GLC last June, is now being made totally irrelevant as more and more redevelopment schemes are being brought to the boil in the dockland boroughs.
Southwark has already received two detailed applications from developers for parts of the Surrey Commercial Dock (see AJ 14.3.73 p. 599 and 25.7.73 p. 172) and now Tower Hamlets is likely to be presented with an outline planning application for 70 of the 100 acres of London Dock, which lies just east of St Katharines.
The Port of London authority, which made the decision to close the docks in 1967, and this created much potentially valuable building land, is not going to miss the chance of reaping some of the profits. So it has formed, with the Sterling Guarantee Trust, a joint development company which aims to cover the London Dock with offices, industry, warehouses and housing. (This includes the restoration of the listed early 19th century warehouse and the re-opening of some of the dock basins filled in by the PLA during this year).
In exchange for permission to build offices and to develop industry in the dock, the development company has offered to build 'council-type' housing. This is an offer which Tower Hamlets, with its long housing list, will find very difficult to turn down. As a guarantee that the flats, when built, will be for local people, the developer is drawing on the experience and services of the Peabody Trust. As an extra carrot, the development company, if its scheme is accepted, will hand the remaining 30 acres of London Dock over to Tower Hamlets for it to use to build its own housing.
GLC and DoE will both have a say, and it is probably that they would like the housing to be of a greater social mix than the strident socialist of Tower Hamlets. So, if the scheme is accepted, it will be the balance struck between what Tower Hamlets wants and what the GLC wants that will show whether the GLC, by rejecting the Dockland Study, has handed the future of Dockland back to the local planning authority. But, whichever way the scale falls, if this scheme is accepted it will set the pattern for future proposals and will thus probably determine the future and character of Dockland itself.
London Dock housing competition
To add to the broth, the GLC has now announced that the site for its long-awaited housing competition is to be between the Mint and London Dock, in the borough of Tower Hamlet, touching the north west of London Dock. This is an area as the RIBA hopefully says 'formerly mainly industrial and commercial, now changing in character and appearance.'
the competition site is five acres (about two hectares), to be developed with different house sizes at a density of 124ppa. Architects and students are eligible for the first stage, with successful students associated with architects for the second stage. The GLC has appointed three architects as assessors, Gabriel Epstein, Andrew Renton - whose St Katharine's Dock development is adjacent - and F.L. Roche; they are joined by Leonard Bennett, FRICS.
Prizes are £3500, £1750 and £1200, with an honorarium of £475 to other second stage entrants. Conditions will be available from Mr F.L. Dawe, GLC Housing Department, Room S102, County Hall, London SE1 7PB, in November, on receipt of £10 deposit.
Architects' Journal, 26 September, 1973, p. 713
[The competition was won by Andrews, Downie and Kelly with Pierre Lagerise; announced 18th November 1974]
