Coverage flowed this week following the official launch of our campaign to “make the Goodsyard great!”. Architects Journal (AJ) published this article:
Backlash begins over Farrell’s Bishopsgate scheme
30 July, 2014 | By Tim Clark, Laura Mark
A campaign group is attempting to halt Terry Farrell’s Bishopsgate Goods Yard scheme amid a chorus of concern over the project’s height and impact
The More Light, More Power campaign, co-ordinated by local residents’ group OPEN Shoreditch, has called the huge development created for Hammerson and Ballymore ‘big, ugly, imposing and not fit for purpose’.
The long-awaited scheme, drawn up by Terry Farrell and Partners with PLP Architecture working on the homes and FaulknerBrowns on the retail, was submitted for planning last week.
But the masterplan - which includes six high-rise towers, ranging from 15 to 48 storeys as well as offices, shops, a new park and open space - has come under fire with the campaign group comparing it to Hong Kong describing the development as ‘impenetrable, dull and monolithic’.
OPEN Shoreditch called for the high-rise towers and ‘wall of glass’ to be ditched and replaced with smaller massing and improvements to the ‘quality and diversity of architecture’.
Group co-chair Rebecca Collings said: ‘The towers [at Bishopsgate] turn their back on Tower Hamlets and smile at the City. We are destroying what makes us unique and replacing it with bland modernity.’
Nicholas Boys Smith, director of the Create Streets organisation, which lobbies for low-rise development, said that while Hammerson and Ballymore had been open and transparent in their consultation on the scheme so far, their own submission made it clear that an ‘overwhelming majority’ of local residents were strongly opposed to the scheme’s height and urban form.
‘They have clearly received more objections about height and massing than any other subject,’ he said.
‘Create Streets conducted an analysis of the surrounding blocks.
‘Only 8 per cent of surrounding buildings are above four storeys. And only 1 per cent are above seven storey: Does this urban context, does the strong local opposition really suggest that this is the right way forward?’
John Biggs, Labour London Assembly member for City and East, has also called on Hammerson and Ballymore to come up with a ‘more appropriate’ height for the scheme.
In November last year the OPEN Shoreditch group challenged a 14-storey mixed-use scheme earmarked for a site opposite the Goods Yard, on Bethnal Green Road, that was designed by Robin Partington for Londonewcastle. The project was rejected by Tower Hamlets Council.
Hammerson was unavailable for comment on OPEN Shoreditch’s latest campaign.