Barking Proposals Scaled Back

Jestico + Whiles and Glenn Howells Architects are working together on plans by Countryside Properties and Fresh Wharf developments for a new project in the London area of Barking.

The 4.4 hectare site is currently brownfield and sits to the east to the North Circular Road with the remains of Barking Abbey to its north east, much of which was cannibalised to build a new royal palace at Dartford.

Currently at the outline stage of the planning process, the scheme involves a series of buildings up to 22 storeys in height that will accommodate up to 950 new apartments, plus shops, restaurants, pubs and bars, a 4 metre tall green wall, 1,616 square metres of space for some sort of community facility, and 418 spaces for residents to park their cars plus 16 visitor spaces.

The scheme is a major scaling down of the previous one with the number of residential units reduced from 1,186 and the retail scaled down from 3,015 square metres.

At the same time the community use has been uplifted from 1,525 square metres and the major design change is the removal of the block in the centre of the site to open it up more and changes made to the building heights elsewhere to scale back the visual density, and whilst the amount of space in the scheme is still above that recommended by the London Plan, in this case the planning authorities have no beef with it.

In removing the central block there is now a core public space that the rest of the project can be properly arranged around with a series of private and public courtyards set off it between the buildings.

The scheme is however still some way off detailed design work and will need to be fully approved in outline before that can happen, meaning one of the key pieces of regeneration in Barking is still years away from getting off the ground

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