Industria stacks factories to free land for housing

Stretching north from the Thames, the River Road Employment Area in Barking is a loose sprawl of scrap dealers, repair shops and warehouses for frozen food and freight. Heavy wagons trundle down grimy arteries lined by low-slung asbestos sheds. Yards are filled with brimming skips and rusting hoppers. Strange smells hang in the air. Though undeniably bleak, places like this have been essential to a diverse urban economy. They’re also under threat; between 2001 and 2020 London lost some 1500ha of industrial land, mainly to housing. Sector experts warn of a crisis, but there’s cause for optimism in Industria, Haworth Tompkins’ new addition to River Road. The ambitious, first-of-its-kind stack of ramp-up factory units shows how a drive to intensify land use could benefit both businesses and the city.

The project has its roots in Haworth Tompkins’ 2019 masterplan for the whole district, which proposed the gradual introduction of multi-storey industrial buildings in the centre to release other areas for housing. To catalyse that change, Barking & Dagenham Council commissioned Industria through its dynamic regeneration arm BeFirst, with backing from the Greater London Authority. On paper, booming demand for scarce workspace means that multi-storey light-industrial buildings should now stack up financially, but cautious investors need proof of concept. ‘This is the way forward,’ says council leader Darren Rodwell, ‘but if we left it to the private sector we’d still be waiting.’

There are many precedents for stacked industrial developments in this country, from mills to modernist flatted factories, and even one with a truck ramp – a 2008 warehouse at Heathrow – but Industria would be the first multi-occupant, multi-storey scheme with vehicle access to the upper levels.

For inspiration, Haworth Tompkins headed to Pantin in Paris to visit the high-tech ‘hôtel industriel’ designed by Paul Chemetov in the 1980s, and looked at examples in Japan where giant stacked warehouses are common. It also recruited Ashton Smith Associates to the team for its experience with vertical logistics hubs in Asia. In large part, though, the building is a pragmatic response to the exigencies of the London market and a tight budget. ‘It is so logical that it almost designed itself’, says architect Graham Haworth. ‘There wasn’t much scope for navel-gazing, which is refreshing’.

Filling its 08.ha site, Industria rises to the height of an ordinary eight-storey building. In plan, it resembles a typical suburban trading estate, with two wings flanking a central yard. Here, however, the accommodation is arranged over four levels, with two open-air decks over the yard served by a helical ramp. The bulk of the building comprises large, airy units – up to 464m² and tall enough to allow mezzanines – intended as warehouses or factories, each with roller shutters onto the decks. To enrich the mix, the top of the north block offers smaller maker-spaces over two storeys, double-loaded on broad corridors and served by goods lifts. ‘You’d normally expect a 45% plot development ratio,’ says Haworth. ‘This achieves 135%.’ When the 45 units are fully occupied there might be 300 people working in the building.

HGVs can only enter the ground floor, but the 30m-diameter ramp can carry 7.5-tonne trucks – the workhorses of industry at this scale. Tucked into a corner of the plan, the chunky corkscrew gives the building its distinctive appearance while keeping internal traffic away from existing streets on two sides. That’s a considerate gesture to future neighbours but drivers’ requirements were, inescapably, a central concern; Industria’s target tenants insist on parking next to their premises, for example, even if another set-up might be workable. ‘Most architects today don’t like giving priority to vehicles,’ says Haworth Tompkins associate director Hugo Braddick. ‘If you want to work in this field you have to embrace it.'

Industria’s design team has certainly leaned into the idea. Branding consultancy DNCO echoed the spiral ramp in the building’s logo, and adopted the colour of road markings as well as industrial settings as the basis of a slick graphic identity. It’s applied at architectural scale on the corrugated cladding of the deck facades, where a chequerboard pattern of silver-grey and sunshine yellow lends a real sense of warmth and energy to what is otherwise a dark and sober palette of steel and concrete.

It might seem unlikely that such a petro-centric building could claim environmental responsibility, but one merit of urban industry is an overall reduction in road miles. Haworth Tompkins has also pursued sustainability in myriad ways, from SuDS to energy-efficient services. Heavy machinery demands a beefy structure, but it’s as lean as can be, says Braddick, and the adaptable ‘chassis’ has a 100-year design life. A rooftop photovoltaic array could power 100 homes. Units are insulated almost to residential specifications, greatly exceeding requirements for unheated warehouses.

Equal care has been given to the building’s contribution to its setting. At both ends, the decks are screened by steel trellises wreathed in climbing plants. Haworth hopes that it’ll soon look like a ruin being reclaimed by jungle. That organic theme continues in the precast cladding of the ground floor which is pimpled with giant pebbles, like slabs of dry riverbed. Full-height windows are inset with doors, so factories might double as shopfronts. Alongside the cavernous main entrance a café serves both tenants and passers-by, whose numbers should grow as the district merges with the residential neighbourhood next door. Height, light and a spiral stair picked out in that signature yellow give a flavour of the world within.

You get an exciting sense here of what a new generation of industrial buildings could give to mixed-use 15-minute cities of the future: new visibility for important work that is too often hidden in windowless boxes on edge-of-town estates, and architecture that is both neighbourly and necessarily distinct from the uniformity of flats and offices. An antidote to banal monoculture in both the economy and in townscape.

Inside, Haworth Tompkins drew on its experience designing studios for the Royal College of Art to make no-frills, knockabout workspaces that still have a certain refinement. In the stacked yards, giant sprinkler tanks and galvanized steel escape stairs are neatly integrated like components in a well-engineered machine. Ribbon windows have solid panels aligned with the column grid, so additional partitions won’t collide with glass. Within the units, there’s pleasure to be had in the ordered composition of durable finishes and exposed services. Many office workers would be envious.

Shared facilities range from showers and meeting rooms to a picnic area on the top deck. It’s a much more sociable proposition than those nearby sheds moated by swathes of asphalt behind palisade fences, and could encourage a little ecosystem of businesses within the building. No tenants had moved in at the time of my visit, but leases had been taken by a perfumier, a baker and a lift rope maker. A promising start for the sort of diverse mix needed to bolster developers’ confidence.

Industria doesn’t have all the answers to London’s workspace woes, of course; it’s hard to see how some of the messier activities on River Road could be reconfigured vertically in such tidy and convivial fashion. But its successful completion should bolster the widespread interest in stacked industrial buildings that has grown in recent years, producing a wealth of innovative proposals. Its challenges bring creative opportunities that Haworth Tompkins has clearly relished. ‘This is new territory, with so many ideas floating around and a big push behind them’, says Haworth. ‘As an architect it’s really quite addictive.’