Bloqs, Enfield, London – Enfield Council with Meridian Water, Bloqs and 5th Studio

Enfield Council has collaborated with Bloqs to facilitate moving their premises through the adaptive reuse of a former vehicle testing plant. The result is the largest open-access workshop in Europe with state-of-the-art facilities from woodwork and metalwork, to fashion and sewing, engineering, and spray finishing with hi-tech machinery, as well as other resources and services such as courses and classrooms.

Where is the project located? 
Bloqs, 2 Anthony Way, London, N18 3QT
 
Who is the developer/client of the project? 
Enfield Council are master developer for Meridian Water and joint funder of Bloqs. Bloqs developed their own site.
 

Enfield Council has collaborated with Bloqs to facilitate moving their premises through the adaptive reuse of a former vehicle testing plant. The result is the largest open-access workshop in Europe with state-of-the-art facilities from woodwork and metalwork, to fashion and sewing, engineering, and spray finishing with hi-tech machinery, as well as other resources and services such as courses and classrooms. The Bloqs business model is designed to be inherently affordable through its membership model. 

Enfield Council saw the opportunity to both facilitate the growth of Bloq’s business whilst re-using an existing building previously planned for demolition. Now the long-term retention of Bloqs is being explored as part of the Meridian Water masterplan, where Enfield Council is enabling development as master developer. Meridian Water lies in the south-eastern corner of the borough in Edmonton, which is a young and majority BAME population. The median household income in Edmonton is circa £20,000. The project responds to its social context through affordable rates and resident outreach programme which has engaged with over 300 people.

Bloqs plays a key role in the gradual development of Meridian Water, determining the character of this emerging new neighbourhood around creation and creativity. There is great emphasis on environmental sustainability in the masterplan which includes the adaptive reuse of buildings, materials and landscape in line with circular economy principles. Bloqs is one of the key drivers of regeneration at Meridian Water; boosting new activity, increasing local employment and opportunities for younger people.
 

Describe the intervention you’ve made including its purpose and motivation, as well as its viability or business case. 

Bloqs was outgrowing its former premises and needed a larger site and accompanying spatial strategy to expand its offer for current and future members - both in terms of additional space and a broader range of facilities. Some of the key challenges included accommodating a changing regeneration environment around planned infrastructure delivery alongside delivering high quality results within a strict budget envelope. 

In partnership with Enfield Council, Bloqs secured funding from the Greater London Authority (GLA) to ambitiously scale up and relocate their premises. The partnership between Bloqs and the Council was key due to the role of this project within the wider context of the Meridian Water masterplan. Here, the Council enabled the Bloqs project through match funding, supporting the appointment of a professional team and acting as proprietor to provide a suitable leasehold to Bloqs.

The project re-uses and extends an existing industrial building to provide state-of-the-art facilities, improved public access through its new café, meeting space, classroom and educational outreach programmes whilst improving its sustainability credentials. Here, the business case for Bloqs is driven by regeneration outcomes which vary from employment to social value. Bloqs is also an important longer term ‘meanwhile’ use at Meridian Water, where the Council supports uses which bring more footfall and public activity to the site which previously saw very little. The collaboration between a multi-disciplinary team tackling problem solving in an innovative way, led to the successful opening of the state-of-the-art facility by the Deputy Mayor of London in early 2022.
 
How does this project make use of an existing structure, place or building in a creative way? Is it innovative? How will this project continue to evolve or enable future flexibility and adaptation? Have you considered its resilience? 

This project avoided unnecessary demolition of a large industrial building through relocating an existing business located at Meridian Water to another part of the site – in this way the project is both economically and environmentally sustainable where the Council has managed its assets to facilitate regeneration and economic growth. 

Some of the more innovative approaches to building design lie in the cost efficiency and sustainability of the project. The Bloqs project was highly innovative in delivering such an ambitious project within a tight budget that was primarily grant funded. The fit-out was designed to standard board dimensions to reduce offcuts, the existing floor slab and soffit was reused, repaired, and repainted. The kitchen and foyer areas were built with secondary use Cross Laminated Timber (CLT) donated from the refurbishment of a nearby architectural studio. The project incorporated a comprehensive and highly innovative sustainable building servicing strategy with heating throughout generated from the incineration of waste wood from the workshop. Here, waste streams are managed more effectively to reduce environmental impact.

The long-term resilience of Bloqs lies in how it will inform and support future permanent development. Bloqs is a key element of the masterplan; both in providing a resource for physically building Meridian Water from the ground up but also in terms of its identity and character as a place for making. The long-term retention of the Bloqs building is currently being explored in new iterations of the masterplan which is testimony to its success.

What is the environmental and social impact of the project? Please share evidence or data to support your entry

The partnership with Bloqs adds significant social value to our local communities. A clear signifier of this is that local colleges are revising their engineering curricula to take advantage of access to manufacturing technology where Bloqs is effectively becoming an additional campus or educational resource. Furthermore, Bloqs is now similarly developing relationships with universities across the city. 

The addition of 30,000 square feet of affordable workspace means the working community can grow more than 100% this year, equating to 250 new jobs. Bloqs turned over more than £4.5m last year, contributing valuable economic activity to the Borough. These metrics are the first signs that the partnership will have long lasting output; establishing an innovative facility with proven viability and quantifiable economic and social outputs.

Bloqs also used BREEAM, planning requirements and the Meridian Water Environmental Sustainability Strategy as a guide in its design and construction stages. The three key components of the sustainability approach were:

Climate Positive – the building is heated by an onsite biomass boiler using waste sawdust and offcuts produced by workshop machinery. Electrical demand is reduced by energy efficient lighting and the building is well ventilated to create no cooling demand.

Environment positive – Bloqs have implemented sustainable urban drainage (SuDS) and meanwhile landscape wherever possible to reduce the hard-standing surface area.

Zero Waste and circular – The project is inherently circular through its re-use and refurbishment of an existing building; the use of secondary material was selected to re-use and re-purpose where possible.