Project Information

This recently completed project consists of public realm and building frontage improvements to an industrial estate with a cluster of breweries, fabricators and makers. The proposals seek to improve the pedestrian experience and support more public-facing activity held on the estate by tenants - whilst maintaining the existing servicing requirements of the businesses. Proposals have been developed in collaboration with the estate tenants and include a re-balanced road and wider pavement with an ‘amenity strip’ that incorporates rainwater gardens and communal items of street furniture, playful road markings, signage and flank wall artwork improvements, opening up the units with glazed frontages, and a series of moveable ‘forklift’ events and activity furniture.
The Council-owned estate is home to both Wild Card Brewery and Hackney Brewery, who have on-site tap rooms and host outdoor markets on the estate at weekends. They are also involved in setting up the Walthamstow Beer Mile initiative in the local area, with its cluster of emerging breweries. You can also get your daily bread from Wild Grains bakery, get your classic scooter converted to electric power at Retrospective Scooters and try some natural wines at Renegade Urban Winery.

This project provided an opportunity for businesses who are rarely asked to contribute to their neighbourhoods to be involved in a co-design process to help shape a more welcoming, inclusive, and sustainable place. The tenants on the industrial estate helped turn a hostile, car-focused environment into more family-friendly, open, and accessible space that invites the community in, unlocks new social functions and better supports economic activity. The tenants' input has been embedded both through shaping the direction of the project in terms of ideas – for example advocating for the removal of parking and introducing greening and communal street furniture to activate the yard spaces – and by getting ‘hands on’ by providing materials or machinery to the contractors and by fabricating some of the delivered interventions. Graphic Designers, Europa, have created a vibrant area identity that reflects the interesting mix of daytime industrial and night-time public-facing uses on the estate, celebrates the existing businesses and promotes the wider industrial heritage of the area.

If you aren’t successful in booking a tour - don’t worry! - the estate will still be open for self-led access, refreshments and purchasing.