Charlton Riverside
Strategic engagement programme to shape a responsive neighbourhood plan for the ongoing development of Charlton Riverside
Charlton Riverside is an area undergoing fundamental change. The challenges at local level are representative of the challenges London faces as a whole. In the future Charlton Riverside will become a diverse neighbourhood integrating work, rest and play. New homes and job typologies will bring thousands of people into the area.
To ensure that local people benefit from this growth in partnership with developers and institutions we were invited to outline a strategic engagement programme for the communities living and working in Charlton Riverside to shape a responsive neighbourhood plan for directing local investment.
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Our starting point proposed connecting into established community activity, to strengthen and build capacity. By working closely with both stakeholders and community champions we would facilitate information sharing and communication on-the-ground as changes began to be discussed.
An interim and temporary amenity would quickly follow and would be devised in collaboration with local partners and business.
Our suggestion was to repurpose one of many existing jetties along the riverfront as a simple, but unusual, public space lined with potted palm trees, cafe kiosk and street furniture.
This simple intervention would provide an immediate community focussed space to host consultative activity and conversations and would be a vital resource and a point of consistency throughout the transformation of Charlton Riverside.
Over a period of 18-24 months we proposed a programme of work to connect cultural and creative activity with existing daily routines thereby reducing barriers for new members of both residential and working communities in the area.
Across this programme our ongoing approach would invigorate an inclusive dialogue between local people, stakeholders and developers facilitated through imaginative events.
These events were to be firmly rooted within the public spaces and temporary interventions such as the jetty, and would grow in scope and reach as local community organisers develop confidence and take ownership of project outcomes.
Charlton Riverside has historically been a place of industry, this remains in current heavy and light industrial work around the riverside area. Alongside the work to build capacity and support local residents, we proposed a scheme to encourage a sustainable diversification of industry and employment that would support Charlton Riverside in becoming a new hub for arts production, complementing the proposed design district just minutes away at Greenwich Peninsula.
We proposed a structure of direct collaboration and brief building with local people and stakeholders to establish a vision for this scheme that would directly encourage the diversification of work opportunities by supporting existing SMEs and new creative social enterprises to play their part in the development of a new innovative fabrication hub.
Our response to Charlton Riverside is demonstration of our commitment as a practice to centre the use of everyday experiences, cultural activity and employment as the catalysts to ensure a diverse and resilient place for the future.
We proposed a plan which would utilise and strengthen the existing formal and informal infrastructures, skills and facilities available on the riverside to build a place where culture is integrated into the fabric of the built environment, and into the daily lives of local people.
Client: Greater London Authority (GLA) and Transport for London (TfL)
Location: London
Completion: 2017