Atelier 11: Forgotten Spaces - RIBA competition

Ateleir 11 submission for the RIBA competition - Forgotten Spaces

Forgotten Spaces Competition

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Follow the old drovers route back out of the city through Spitalfields, across London Fields, along a present day line of events, galleries, markets, parks and you arrive in central Hackney. The site is at the heart of ‘Hackney Village’, north of Hackney Central railway station, at the end of the Narroway. There you will find open site, the result of a German bomb, at present a car park, sitting latent, next to 1950s Hackney council block, waiting to be found. The remnants of the urban structure still exist but many are forgotten, with degenerate developers starting to invade the area. On the west side of the area, the Pembury Estate sits back waiting for recovery. We hope to react against this lost space and design an active public space, at the centre of Hackney, for the creative and making people who live and work in the area.

The long history; the first real records of a settlement in Hackney date back to Saxon times, before this most of the borough was farmland, providing food for the Roman city of Londinium, whose defensive walls rose up south of Shoreditch. A major Roman Roads ran north through Hackney, what is now the A10, the Kingsland Road, was the Roman route to Lincoln and on to York.

In Medieval times Hackney Brook flowed through the centre of Hackney running from Stoke Newington to the River Lea. The Parish of Hackney was founded in 1275.The church of St Augustine the tower of which still stands was built in the sixteenth century. The present Hackney Church, St John’s, can be seen from the site, it was built in 1792. At that time a ‘Dutch’ style house had been built on the corner site facing down the Narroway (It’s site was later to become the electric cinema) and Clapton Square to the east was under preparation. There were theatres, market gardens the famous Sutton House nearby.

With the arrival of the trains Hackney was to become a bustling Metropolis, and the site hosted a department store and the electric cinema. Clarence Road and the Mews behind the site were important active streets. The war and the post war period changed all that. Substantial bomb damage and neglect saw the removal of many buildings. An adjacent 1950s housing Council block was built along Clapton Square. On the west of the site is the Pembury Estate, with the redevelopment of the area known as New Pembury occurring in the 70s unfortunately this destroyed much of the previous urban structure of streets in this area.

Over the last ten years, there has been a creative regeneration within the area and particularly Clarence Mews, with many new activities: screen printing, furniture making, design and photography. New work live units naturally occurring. The new regenerating activities are witnessed in the markets from Brick Lane to Columbia Street to Broadway Market running along the old drovers routes to the city a line of events. The creative residents and workers of the local area running from Hackney Downs across to Homerton and Chatsworth Road, and from the Pembury Estate, Clarence Road and Clapton Square would benefit from a special space that can gather local people, working and enjoying happenings together. It would be a place belonging to the local people; a place attracting others too.

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A Hackney back lands space becomes a new square, through a design process involving a series of models at 1:100, 1:50 and 1:20 models and local participation. Making a space for the everyday, a continuation of the line of events adding a new knot on to it. It is a place where old and new meet, cooperate and compete, filled with food, stories and music. Whirling there in the middle, of an expanding universe that lives in a state of impermanence rather than finality. A square where performances of all kinds can happen, theatre shows, filming, parties, exhibitions, markets.

Iain Sinclair in his book, ‘Hackney, The Rose Red Empire’ opens with Sinclair musing on the varied and odd detritus that lies in Hackney’s streets and its recycling. The recyclers of his stories are the special characters part of the creative milieu, odd film-makers, painters, photographers, and writers, that ‘over’ populate Hackney. (The borough claims to have the largest number of artists in London). These characters are part of the recycling of London and the detritus of Hackney for recycling. This back land site is a hopeful home of recycling; a place where some of the vitality of the environment re-enjoyed, from cradle to cradle.

Gillette Square, in neighbouring Dalston, is an inspiration with its co-operative elements, market pods and public events. Broadway Market, a similar distance away from the site, is a different inspiration, with its designers, bookshops, food stalls and cappuccinos. Together they offer a series of co-operative enterprise hubs working across London. Elements of the proposed new Hackney square range from a theatre bar and Terry the coppersmith, a spy and bicycles; as the design process exploring through models a series of proposals for parts of the square, with potentially twenty live-work units linking people to objects to their places.