Doughnut Outer London Walking Tours: Barking

Join architectural journalist Merlin Fulcher for the sixth instalment in Doughnut: The Outer London Festival’s new series of walking tours exploring the capital’s resurgent fringes.

Fueled by its medieval abbey and once mighty fishing fleet – Barking briefly reinvented itself as a manufacturing district before struggling in the era of post industrial decline.

After becoming one of London’s poorest and most poorly skilled areas, the town centre embarked on an ambitious programme of renewal at the turn of the Millennium.

The transformation – originally drawn up as part of a strategic vision for growth in the so-called Thames Gateway region – will deliver 7,000 new homes and 10,000 new jobs over the next two decades.

At its core is an ambition to create high-quality and flexible rented housing, to boost skills and business opportunities, and to establish new cultural attractions within the district.

Key developments include AHMM’s £35 million, privately-funded William Street Quarter social housing scheme featuring family-sized brick terrace houses arranged in mews streets.

The studio’s Barking Learning Centre – completed ten years earlier – reinvented Barking’s civic centre by floating new apartments above a refurbished existing library.

Featuring a folly constructed from reclaimed bricks, a new town square by Muf Architecture/Art delivered as part of the regeneration also won the prestigious European Prize for Urban Public Space.

Meanwhile on the town’s former industrial fringe Schmidt Hammer Lassen transformed a former granary into a new creative enterprise hub with a bronze facade wrapped around historic 1870s buildings.

Dubbed IceHouse Creative Quarter, the development includes a new 4,400 sqft studio space for artists opening this year and designed by Delvendahl Martin.

Elsewhere on the former site of Barking Power Station there are plans for 11,000 new homes to be delivered alongside a school, church and flexible office spaces.

Dubbed Barking Riverside, the project has been earmarked for accelerated delivery following the go-ahead for a £260 million connection to the London Overground network.

Witness the multitude of architectural interventions hoping to unleash Barking’s potential and discuss the ambitious new strategies for town centre renewal.