Chrisp Street Market

Project Details

Location: London

Project: Environmental Enhancements

Client:Tower Hamlets Council & Leaside Regeneration

Consultants: The Morton Partnership

Contract Value: £100,000

Project Description

The commission to develop Environmental Enhancements in the Chrisp Street Market area, was won from a shortlist including some of the most up and coming names in UK architecture. Chrisp Street Market is the Lansbury Estate, built as part of the 1951 Festival of Britain. It was a visionary design looking to the future of social housing in a mixed-use development on the site of the Victorian market. The area has a vibrant local community, but the Market area has become rather messy and run down due to many different interventions over the years. 

Neu’s approach to this project was to slowly transform the area with thoughtful interventions rather than dramatic and overpowering design elements. Our proposals were to develop a coherent, flexible and maintainable environment for the community. Key aspects were to provide additional kiosk space utilising redundant spaces; Rationalise signage and street clutter; review Market entrances; improve routes; create design guidelines; encourage an evening economy; improve lighting and celebrate the lively market heritage inspiring a strong sense of place and local pride. We imitated the project by making a film with the local community about their aspirations and what could be achieved. With a limited budget, design ideas formed a wish list of works that were prioritised in order of preference. This allowed the Chrisp Street Community Partnership to select the interventions for implementation and continue to raise money for the other preferred ideas. 

For each phase a fixed price contract was negotiated with a Contractor to carry out the prioritised works (Phase 1: New Kiosks for seedbed business use, new market entrance signage and new seating) The method of funding meant there was no allowance for budget overruns. The second phase of the project has recently been completed, this has included works to the redundant flagpole and new street signage for the area, adopted as a trial prior to carrying out similar signage works across the borough of Tower Hamlets.