The creative retrofit, extension and intensification of a struggling high street business centre to create diverse, flexible workspaces, community facilities and an improved station in an outer London suburb.

The pandemic changed the relationship between where people live and work in ways we are only beginning to fully understand. Highams Park provides a rapidly changing town centre par excellence. Its Edwardian terraces and inter-war semis have seen escalating popularity since the pandemic and the high street is changing rapidly.

With the daily commute becoming occasional, residents are ‘embracing the local’ and need more adaptive uses in their high street. Initial research identified the post-pandemic work needs of existing residents. Our participative brief development process saught to provide evidence of needs – size, type, economic, social - as the basis for creating new forms of workspace.

By combining detailed place-specific investigations with the GLA's 'Good Growth by Design' strategic policies we developed a new workspace building that delivers exciting new uses for underused high street buildings and nurture the SME’s that are critical to London’s green economy.

Adjacent to Highams Park Overground station sits an 4,670sqm site, currently for Class E uses. A previous planning application to redevelop 7 storey residential above retail was refused by Waltham Forest due to its visual incongruity, poor quality of units and failure to deliver a new station entrance.

This refusal creates an opportunity for an alternative that supports the need for flexible workspaces on the high street with a strong civic presence. Our starting point was to maximise the reuse of existing elements. By synthesising new with old we create a place-based design rooted in its existing character and history.

Careful historical analysis of the townscape develops an understanding of its development and use, identifying opportunities for connections, access, massing and active frontages. The new building is defined by the key public spaces it surrounds. The ground floor spaces along the main road are publicly accessible for new cultural and social uses relevant to the workspaces, taking account of the GLA’s ‘Cultural Facilities Toolkit’ we co-authored.

The designs deliver a diversity of workspaces that works within the site’s spatial constraints and a viable operating model. The new Highams Park Studios support and enhance the economic, social and cultural ecology of the neighbourhood.

The existing pedestrian crossing and site entrance lead to a new central courtyard at the heart of the workspaces, providing pedestrian access to the new station entrance, access to the shared workspaces and covered space adjacent to food and drink. A publicly accessible space, designed to the Public London Charter, with a rain garden as its centrepiece, it manages the site’s rainwater using local species. Extending the uses, enclosure and connectivity of the high street the courtyard nurtures serendipity and collaboration, becoming a key piece of Highams Park’s social infrastructure.