Hawley Wharf, Camden - LabTech with Allford Hall Monaghan Morris

Where is the project located 
45 Kentish Town Road, London, NW1 8NX
 
Who is the developer/client of the project?
LabTech

Describe the context of this project, its neighbourhood and people?

Hawley Wharf transforms an underused piece of City in Camden Town into a busy mixed-use development, enhancing the area’s strong identity and creating a vibrant new quarter for the benefit of the local community, users and visitors alike. 

In an area of historic significance, the site is a connection point where roads, railways and canal intersect, resulting in an irregular plan geometry and complex infrastructural constraints. Prior to development, it was poorly connected with few access routes across it. The Regent’s Canal towpath was in a dilapidated condition and the viaduct arches had become known for anti-social behaviour.

Allford Hall Monaghan Morris was appointed as Architect in March 2012, to develop a masterplan in consultation with the local community and other stakeholders who had opposed previous proposals. The scheme, consented only 9 months later, consists of eight new buildings set around three distinctive new public spaces, the existing railway viaducts and two refurbished buildings including the Grade II Listed 1 Hawley Road. The project provides affordable and private homes, a primary school, workplace and retail units, workshops, a cinema, and new market buildings.

New routes linking north-south and east-west, to follow pedestrian desire lines, were created to meet anticipated visitor numbers. Certain routes will be closed to the public after hours to address safety concerns by focusing footfall. The towpath is expanded in width and its calm preserved by the new wall of the market building shielding the canal from the busy market and providing space for planting and seats.
 
What makes this place thrive? How does the community come together? What makes this a great place to live, work, play, visit or learn? 

The new buildings create distinctive spaces, each connected by welcoming streets, accessible open spaces and new public realm.The irregular geometry of the residential buildings resulted in a variety of housing typologies and bespoke layouts: 100 apartment types across 195 homes. These are further enhanced by the different types of projecting and recessed balconies, maximising both privacy and views across the site and London skyline beyond.

Two out of the three residential buildings also contain a mix of commercial spaces with retail units and office use at ground and basement levels. An incubator area on the first floor taps into Camden’s support of developing businesses.

Hawley School, the first built phase of the masterplan completed in 2016 is a brick clad single-form entry school arranged around an intimate timber central courtyard. The three-storey building’s stepped massing correlates with students’ progression through the learning years.

The existing viaducts that activate the centre of the site have been refurbished and provide 32 retail and light industrial units along a series of gateways between public and local spaces.

The new flexible market buildings offer market space, light industrial space, offices, rooftop restaurants and public roof terraces. The four-storeys of partially enclosed market space follow the tradition of outdoor markets, take part in the vibrant local area and continue its famous heritage. Five steel bridges, at different levels, connect the two new buildings which allow the public to flow between buildings and create a dynamic public area below.
 
How has this place adapted, and how does it continue to adapt, to changing demographics, behaviours, market context, policy, transport habits and the climate crisis? What makes it resilient?

Five fire damaged houses on Chalk Farm Road have been converted to create a new high street frontage for the market buildings behind. The new market buildings provide flexible floorplates that can be adapted to changing enterprises, whether enclosed or open to the air. Circulation spaces are generously sized, with steel staircases and bridges linking the buildings. The concrete structure is left exposed and finishes throughout are robust to withstand wear and tear associated with the anticipated number of visitors. 

These floorplates allow for adaptability including, large transfer beams to reduce column placements and multiple locations of stub stacks/ electrical distribution for future tenants to plug into.

The external spaces around the centre of the site are also designed with flexibility in mind. A public square between two of the residential buildings provides an outdoor space for residents, workers and the public, with the ability to facilitate pop up events such as a farmers’ market.

The Grade II Listed 1 Hawley Road was restored and incorporated into the Primary School as a more domestic teaching space. Any risk arising from surface water from heavy rainfall is handled by large volume attenuation tanks under the school playground, together with green and brown roofs on the residential buildings, mitigating against the risk of flooding across the masterplan.

Following handover, a key adjustment made to the services strategy, originally designed in 2011, was the redundancy of the CHP unit due to the effective renewable source of wind power coming from the National Grid.
 
Please share any data or evidence about the social, economic and environmental performance of this place?

With the site having a previous reputation for anti-social behaviour, the development addressed safety concerns and certain routes are closed to the public after hours concentrating pedestrian movement on fewer and safer routes that offer good levels of natural surveillance, as well as easy access from the surrounding street network. When speaking with a local police officer, Councillor Richard Cotton (Labour Group, Camden and Primrose Hill), was told how the police were happy with the new development as it had helped to ‘design out crime’ (1). 

In addition to creating a safer place to work and live, the provision of incubator workplace units, artisanal and industrial workshops, and a new open market building, offer a wide range of flexible spaces for small, local and independent businesses to start up and grow. Although the Covid-19 pandemic saw footfall across the site drop significantly, after finally opening its doors in August 2021, Hawley Wharf is now seeing weekly increases in sales and footfall, with a target to welcome 30 million visitors a year. Early surveys conducted by the client LabTech have also found that “customers love the market stalls, the vibrancy, and the organisation in retail”(2).

(1) Hawley Wharf, Winner of Winners Award video

(2)www.retailgazette.co.uk/blog/2021/10/spotlight-camden-market-hawley-wharf/