The Tribeca site has been closed off to the public for 150 years. Out of sight, out of mind, it’s a place that’s had little meaning to surrounding communities. But this is about to change. Strategically located directly on the Regent’s Canal walk, near residential neighbourhoods and bustling centres of activity, Tribeca is set to become a key piece of the urban puzzle.
Read the full interview below:
The Journal: The site has a rich industrial past, which has been eroded over time with more recent development. The Ugly Brown Building has become an emblem of an unloved part of North London. When you took on the project, what was your starting point to reinforce, or perhaps reinvent, the spirit of the place? Were there cues from the past that helped inform its new sense of identity?
Daniel Kew: The site has a rich history, and it’s a history of dramatic change, which was driven by the industrial revolution and developments in transport and infrastructure. Historically, this land was quite bucolic with villas in natural landscapes on the edge of London. As the railways boomed, the expansion of London radically changed the area around King’s Cross and St Pancras, as well as the whole swathe of land to the north.
The existing building – a blank warehouse designed as a post office sorting facility – fills the site to the edges and doesn’t engage with the canal side character at all. It has a privatised strip of land alongside it that is completely unloved. This is a blank space on the public perception of the area, and it offers no opportunity for exploration. But it hasn’t always been like that. The original Bass Barrell warehouse, which burnt down in the 1970s, had a natural connection to the canal. Beer barrels were delivered via a railway bridge directly into the warehouse, where they were stored and later hoisted down onto barges for delivery around London.
There is a lot of interesting history here, but on the site, there are not many remnants left of those earlier uses, because the current scheme pushed that aside. So, we needed to rethink the way the site integrates with the city.
The Journal: Tribeca neighbours onto some of the most deprived wards in the city. How will the development benefit surrounding communities?
DK: This is really important and there are probably two key strands to this. One way is to knit this new piece of city into its context by opening up pedestrian connections, and the other is to provide a mix of uses. By establishing a genuinely mixed-use offer for the local and wider communities – a range and diversity of workspaces, retail, food and beverage offerings, as well as residential accommodation that includes 50% affordable – an all-day environment can be created, without dead times. This should promote natural movement patterns through the site, with people arriving throughout the day.
The spaces have been designed to be welcoming and lively, with a street-like character, characterful landscaping and thresholds that invite people in. We envisage morning coffee grabbers, families on the school run, workers arriving from the tube station, and mid-day lunch-timers from the workplaces, resting in the central square or walking between Camden and King’s Cross, stopping to rest under the trees. In the evening, post-work crowds would mix with visitors wandering along the canal, and diners that have been drawn in from the canal side restaurants. So hopefully, we have created quite an engaging offer that isn’t mono-cultural, that doesn’t have a single purpose, but provides opportunities for the wider community to engage with the spaces at different times of the day, for different reasons.
