Docklands Heronry by Yuen-Wah Williams (The Bartlett School of Architecture)

Set in Canary Wharf, Docklands Heronry was presented at the AT Awards live finals on 18 September 2024. Learn about how the project has stood the test of time.

Office vacancies in the US and London were at 20-year high in 2023, according to a article in the Financial Times. Yuen Wah Williams’ Docklands Heronry project addresses the issue of ‘stranded assets’ in London’s Canary Wharf – if and when office tenants choose not to renew their 25-year leases in line with the falling demand for office space across the capital. The ambitious scheme focuses on a range of strategies for regeneration that synthesise design work with case studies, interviews with those directly involved with Canary Wharf, and research into current real-estate trends.

Perhaps most importantly of all, Docklands Heronry responds to the urgent problem of what to do with all the rigid, single-use structures that will be left behind after businesses move away from traditional office typologies. Among the multiple approaches highlighted by Williams are community-led management, mixed-use, alternative education, re-use, social housing, food growing, onsite renewables, urban greening, and tourism. She also advocates for the careful deconstruction of redundant buildings, with saved materials redeployed on new mixed-use structures or floated down the Thames to Tilbury Docks where they can be used elsewhere.

Yuen-Wah Williams from the Bartlett School of Architecture explains the thinking behind her inventive Docklands Heronry project.

The name Docklands Heronry alludes to Heron Quays, part of Canary Wharf. The area’s main industry, the docks, closed in 1981 due to shipping containers not being able to travel all the way up the Thames, and the area fell into economic and social decline. In 1982, the London Docklands Development Corporation (LDDC) was established, with the aim of regenerating Docklands, in part through the deregulation of planning. The subsequent emergence of Canary Wharf – a finance district characterised by tall glassy skyscrapers built to the 20th century North American model – reflected the dramatic change in the UK economy from industrial to service based.

On the 25th of April 2024, it was announced that Canary Wharf had lost £900m of value as a direct outcome of rising office vacancies. HSBC and a few other companies have announced that they won’t renew their leases at the end of the 25-year lease cycle. This project explores what to do with these giant buildings if no one wants to take them over.

The aims of this project are the same as the LDDC’s were 40 years ago: to bring land and buildings back into effective use; to encourage the development of existing and new industry and commerce; to ensure that housing and social facilities are available; and to create an attractive environment. It explores four key issues: social housing, reuse, urban greening, and education.

Social housing
Tower Hamlets is the most densely populated borough in England, but also has the highest percentage of empty houses in London with 23,000 families on the housing register for living in overcrowded conditions, and 40 per cent of Tower Hamlets’ residents living in social rented properties. It is evident that more affordable – preferably social – housing must be built to meet these demands.

Many buildings in Canary Wharf are already partially vacant on several floors. Deep floor plates can be a hindrance to change of use, resulting in uncomfortable, dark, irregular flats. But piecemeal redevelopment could slowly evolve into a radical reconfiguration of the whole site. New homes will be modest in size and made up of deconstructed and reconstructed fragments of architecture.

The proposed housing provision falls slightly short of the density target of 1,100 habitable rooms per hectare, as homes are designed to be able to grow. Learning from Alejandro Aravena’s Half a House project, I devised a housing typology that stacks upon itself and provides residents the means of expanding via permitted development. Residents can have private gardens or expand their homes into the void as their families grow. No houses will be more than 10 storeys above the ground. Additionally, the homes can be expanded horizontally or indeed rented together from the beginning. This is to ensure that multi-generational families can live close together, but also retain an element of privacy.

Reuse
All tall buildings will have their cranes reinstated, remaining as a permanent part of the architecture to facilitate deconstruction and reconstruction. Materials and objects will be marked for deconstruction and logged in a database before being incrementally deconstructed and transported to a new building or onsite storage facility.

Materials not needed on site can be floated to Tilbury Docks for shipping elsewhere in the country and the world. London’s waterways will be useful for low-carbon transportation and materials, as well as leisure activities.

The collage drawing style reflects the fact that Canary Wharf will be incrementally taken apart and collaged back together in a constant process of adaptation and redevelopment that will make it future proof.

Urban greening
There is a strong correlation between fewer green spaces and higher deprivation. The difference between the percentage of green space in Tower Hamlets, London’s most deprived borough, and Richmond, London’s most affluent borough, is astounding.

Docklands Heronry will pride itself on being a walkable development, with no local amenity being more than a stone’s throw away. Cores from redundant buildings will support vertical farming and windfarms, providing fresh food and onsite renewables to local communities Residents will be educated on city-friendly plants for landscaping and allotments.

Aspen Way, to the north of Canary Wharf, will begin to merge with the green areas around it creating a network of rewilded open space. As well as forests, there will be small parks managed by the community and fronted by independent businesses, attracting movement throughout the site.

Medium to fast-growing trees will contribute to the sustainable material strategy. The young trees will eventually grow into large protective canopies that shelter residents from the Barcelona-like climate that London will begin to experience as soon as 2050.

Education
Canary Wharf Group is developing life sciences on site as a direct response to the fact that the King’s Cross Knowledge Quarter is running out of space. King’s Cross benefitted from the addition of Central Saint Martins during its own regeneration, bringing a student population that supported local businesses and enlivened the public realm. I’m proposing the same strategy for Canary Wharf. The University of Research, Retrofit and Reuse will offer courses on construction, agriculture, and retrofit to young people and those wishing to retrain.

Reusing the structure of 30 South Colonnade, the university will house a variety of spaces, including the Unconventional Lecture Theatre, which will prioritise practical demonstrations over spoken delivery, a seed library, a materials library, and spaces designed to encourage interaction and community cohesion including an atrium formed from the reclaimed core.

Darker spaces within the deep floor plates will be used for archives and libraries, while workshops will be bathed in daylight. On the ground floor heavy machinery and more advanced workshops will facilitate fabrication and repurposing of larger construction materials. The building will continue to change as the needs of the university evolve.