Trinity Buoy Wharf, Tower Hamlets - Urban Space Management

Where is the project located

Trinity Buoy Wharf, 64 Orchard Place, London, E14 0JW

Who is the developer/client of the project?

Urban Space Management

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

Trinity Buoy Wharf (TBW) is located where the River Lea meets the Thames. Urban Space Management (USM) won a competition in 1997 to turn it into a centre for arts and cultural industries. We took over from previous owners the London Docklands Development Corporation in April 1998. Historically this buoy manufactory was operated by Trinity House. It is home to London’s only lighthouse which was built for Sir Michael Faraday to undertake lighting experiments. As well as the original buildings we have created 4 large buildings by re-using shipping containers, the first built in 1999/2000.

The neighbouring sites on the Lower Lea Peninsula were industrial and are now mainly residential. Pura Foods is now London City Island with 1,760 apartments. Next door to us is Goodluck Hope with 830 apartments. We have been the main community here for many years. Now these sites are being occupied we have a new and growing set of neighbours. The mix of residents includes owner/occupiers, market cost renters and social housing tenants. Single people to families.

We have a mix of uses including space for work, performance, events and education. We have around 550 people based here. Major tenants include Uber Boats by Thames Clippers, English National Opera (props), The Faraday School, Trulife Graphics (holographers), and the Prince’s Foundation, art Diploma Year. Smaller tenants include craftspeople, artists/sculptors, photographers, musicians/sound artists, designers, arts organisations, ceramicists, consultants, TV/film related, poet, architects, electrical engineers, bamboo product suppliers, tattooist, a floating recording studio, a café and a diner

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 tenants and activities that take place here make this place thrive - filling the spaces inside and outside with activity. In term time we have over 100 school pupils and 55 art students. We have exhibitions, performances, weddings, corporate hire and filming. There is constant movement from the Thames Clipper activity on the river, as their operational base is on a pier USM built. The Diner and the Café provide a good range of food and beverage. On Orchard Place and on site we installed interpretation signs about the history of the area. We have around 100,000 visitors a year, the majority arriving on foot. That number increases as more residents move into the area. At weekends the lighthouse is our main public attraction which gets around 50 visitors each day. They experience Longplayer, a world class sound installation designed to run for 1,000 years and not repeat itself.

There is no single community here. Within the Wharf people interact, sometimes creatively, sometimes for services and sometimes just for friendship.

TBW is truly a unique and different place in London, partly because of its location and what it looks like but also because of how it is managed. USM are particularly proud to have opened up what was a private site to be part of London, including such essentials as providing public toilets. But we also have a wide range of visual feasting – sculptures, buildings, nooks and crannies - all in a human scale development.

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?

We have kept to our original masterplan including the list of uses we devised in 1997. We have been flexible about how we did this e.g we kept the large buildings for larger scale users. To create SME space we re-used shipping containers. That decision was driven by economics, not design. As we have to keep rents for tenants low, building with standard materials was unviable in this area where no grants were available.

We did not know we would have a major Foundation Year art college here, but we knew we wanted arts education. We have a flexible planning permission which means we can have different uses in different buildings.

We have around 65 KW of PV’s on our roofs which covers around 33% of our base load. We are soon to provide a further 25 KW. We have 6 EV charging points and plenty of bike parking.

The key to resilience is the management model. We have a 124 year lease from arts charity the Trinity Buoy Wharf Trust who themselves have a 125 year lease from the freeholder (LB Tower Hamlets). We pay 25% of our rental income to the Trust. They use this income to fund a wide range of arts activity in the area while paying no rent to the freeholder. This is a good example of a type of circular economy. We cannot sell on for residential use and are constrained by our lease to lead with arts/creative uses and to maintain public access.

Please share any data or evidence about the social, economic and environmental performance of this place?

TBW will be home to creative uses for many years ahead. We have created a self-sustaining model that generates income for the arts via the TBW Trust. Examples of their funding include weekend invigilation for Longplayer, burseries for the Prince’s Foundation Diploma Year, major sponsor of The Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize (an international competition), sponsorship for arts charity The Big Draw and for Hussain Manawer’s Compulsory Subjects workshop week, now in its 3rd year. Plus, a wide range of other arts initiatives mostly in Trinity Buoy Wharf and our local boroughs of Tower Hamlets and Newham.

We have around 102 tenants in 106,000 sq.ft of lettable space and we take a cross subsidy approach. Fully commercial tenants pay more rent, with reduced rent for artists. Rents for arts uses vary from £2 to £12/sq.ft, while commercial rents vary from £15-30/sq.ft. Service charge is an additional £5.50/sq.ft across the site. We do not rely on any one user or size of tenant, which spreads the risk to ensure that we always have a sensible income for the site and thus for the TBW Trust.

No formal economic impact assessment has been undertaken, but over the years we have generated lots of jobs and activity as well as creating one of the most interesting places in London. We have 22,444 social media followers. Our neighbours Ballymore used us for marketing their flats and as inspiration for the branding and design of their 2 sites - Goodluck Hope and London City Island.