The Great Eastern Buildings

Project Team                     

Client: London Borough Hackney

Architect: Karakusevic Carson Architects

Landscape: East

Services: Peter Brett Associates

Structures: Peter Brett Associates

Project Data: 18 mixed tenure homes, retail space and public realm.

Great Eastern Buildings is a mixed use development on a brownfield site in Hackney providing 14 intermediate and 4 market sale units with creative industry space located at street level.

The site was formally offices for the Great Eastern Railway and sits between the municipal buildings located on Mare St and 3 storey Victorian residential properties forming the Horton Road Conservation Area.  

The building responds to the brief to provide creative industries units by creating a shop-front open to the street and onto a shared forecourt space opposite the railway arch that could be used for events.  A new Mews street is proposed parallel to the railway line which responds to the depth of the site accessing the units reminiscent of a London Mews typology.

All the units are designed to meet Lifetime Homes, HCA and London Housing Design Guide criteria and benefit from generous external space in the form of terraces and balconies.

The building is designed to Code for Sustainable Homes level 4 and benefits from an array of sustainable features including green roofs, SUDS, photo-voltaic panels, micro CHP boiler, heat recovery ventilation system and a highly insulated building envelope.

Ground floor units benefit from private patio gardens which extend out from and compliment internal living spaces.  The communal garden space is designed to have a natural feel and to provide a stimulating bio diverse environment containing play and social spaces combined with wild flower planting and an ‘insect hotel.’ 

The proposed material palette of brickwork echoes the surrounding Victorian Housing and railway viaduct.  The Mews elevation interprets the elements of a traditional Mews in a contemporary manner by utilising white brickwork to ground floor with darker brickwork above and metal balustrading to terraces and Juliet balconies.

The blank gable elevation addressing the railway benefits from traditional painted signage that is visible from Mare street giving the building and creative industry units a presence as well as referencing the sites past and historical connection.