Derbyshire Street Pocket Park

The eastern end of Derbyshire Street was previously a dead-end with only one function: space for twelve car-parking bays. Despite the surrounding urban spaces being a hive of activity, the dead-end provided only an opportunity for anti-social behaviour and fly-tipping.

It was transformed to take advantage of its ignored potential: a south-facing aspect, overlooking Weaver's Fields park, to become a new outdoor café space and shared pedestrian / bike route.

The new pocket park features a range of sustainable urban drainage components aimed at reducing pressure on London's sewer system. This includes green roof bike racks, attenuating planters, permeable paving and the central rain garden. This brings enhanced biodiversity and offers an insight into the potential future aesthetics of the public realm.

The pocket park is a functioning space, interconnected by a series of SuDS components. The spatial layout revolves around this functionality making it an important benchmark - a showcase for the overt role a small piece of public realm can play within the wider cityscape and environment.

Despite the apparent simplicity, the landscape design offers an effective and robust approach to retrofitting the public realm to better suit contemporary issues such as biodiversity and climate change adaption. Many of the technical aspects used can be applied to similar scenarios elsewhere, making it an exemplar project for the built environment profession.

The local community have benefitted from this by an obvious improvement to the streetscape – the transformation of an ignored dead-end into a useful community focused pocket park with purpose.

Overview

  • Project Name

    Derbyshire Street Pocket Park

  • Location

    Tower Hamlets, London

  • Category

    Parks and gardens

  • Landscape Architect

    Cookson & Tickner

  • Client

    London Borough of Tower Hamlets

  • Brief

    This project was unusual in that the concept for the site was initiated through discussion between Oxford House (the adjacent community arts centre), landscape architects Greysmith Associates and the local authority, Tower Hamlets. Coincidentally, the council had identified the potential of routing a new cycle lane connection through the space. However, the full potential for the street was only identified once the main players came together with a complimentary agenda. This presented the opportunity to develop the brief from scratch - to create a new community pocket park incorporating SuDS at the heart of the project.

  • Awards

    Shortlisted for an LI Award 2015

Details

  • Project Team

    Landscape Architect: Greysmith Associates Community & Arts Centre: Oxford House

  • Local planning authority or government body

    London Borough of Tower Hamlets

  • Year Completed

    2014

  • Project Size

    765m2

  • Additional Information

    The project has delivered an integrated approach to public realm design, utilizing rainwater as a resource to benefit the space, rather than channeling it straight into drains. This relieves some of the pressure on London's overloaded sewer system and brings with the many benefits of SuDS at street level. The landscape architect has also promoted the integration between building and street - proposals included moving Oxford House's cafe to the rooms overlooking the pocket park, thus utilizing a dedicated outdoor cafe space, connected via a new access door. This will further animate the pocket park and bring vitality and life where previously there was none. Oxford House are currently engaging with architects to develop this part of the project. The result is not a standalone piece of landscape but a fully interconnected piece of urban realm that brings landscape, architecture and engineering seamlessly together.

  • Cookson & Tickner

    Registered Practice - (1 - 2 Employees)
    Profile

  • Approximate Map Location

    Location

    Tower Hamlets, London

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