community/cultural
Julian Sofaer, 1978
Canal Club Community Garden, Belmont Wharf, Waterloo Gardens, E2 9HP
The Canal Club, a 1978 modernist community centre designed by Julian Sofaer, is a modest, open-plan space. It features a community garden developed by the boating community moored alongside it.
Bethnal Green
Cambridge Heath, Haggerston, Hoxton
55, 309, D3, 106, 254, D6, 26, 388
The Wellington Estate community centre, known as The Canal Club, was designed in 1978 by the Iraqi-Jewish architect Julian Sofaer. A thoughtful and principled modernist, Sofaer received several postwar commissions from the London County Council and Greater London Council (GLC), many of which were for schools and community buildings.
Wellington Estate residents' recall being consulted before his appointment - visiting similar buildings and helping to define the needs for their own centre. This process reflects the participatory ethos of the time, and Sofaer’s own commitment to designing from a humanist perspective.
Sofaer was deeply influenced by music, form, and the artistic legacy of the Florentine Renaissance. His designs reveal a meticulous attention to detail and proportion. The modest building he created opens directly onto the Regent’s Canal. Its subtly sloped roof planes tilt in multiple directions, deliberately designed to ensure the building casts no shadow on the water.
In its early days, The Canal Club was a fully functioning community hub. Between 1981 and 1995, supported initially by the GLC, the Wellington Tenants' and Residents Association established a nursery, youth centre, and laundrette (the latter closed in 1986). It stood as a model of GLC-funded community space.
In 2010 the council permitted canal boaters to moor alongside, aas part of the agreement with the council, they create and maintain a community garden. This garden, nestled between the Canal Club, its basketball court, and the canal, has since become a treasured haven for residents, visitors, and wildlife.
After being earmarked for demolition, today, the building is once again in community hands, run by the Wellington Estate Tenants and Residents Association. However, its future remains uncertain, as the council considers plans for redevelopment.
Despite this, The Canal Club remains an active and vital space. It hosts a range of community events including youth theatre workshops, refugee support sessions, musical workshops, weekly arts and crafts sessions, and exhibitions of local artwork.
We share hopes of saving this unique building, the garden it inspired, the biodiversity it nurtures, and the carbon cost it spares by avoiding redevelopment.
The building will be open for viewing and a tour will cover the social history of the building and the resident campaign to save it. The Canal Club Community Garden will be open and hosting children's art activities and a pizza making club where you can make a pizza (bring along your favourite toppings - we will supply the dough).
Drop in
art studio, art in the public realm, bridge, historical house, residence, walk/tour, event
Join us this year at 'TIME' '24 for an assemblage of workshops and creative out-reach projects, communicating through artistic expression the notion of time and place in gesture and performance through drawing, painting, portraiture, sculpture, poetry, photography and film, capturing individuality, in the street, and beyond, to sow the seeds of a new time.
Unknown, 1890
