Alex Watson

Once a town of regular, domestic, urban grain, Woolwich has suffered from the erasure of much of its historic urban arrangement. The influx of developer driven residential towers, marketed at wealthy Londoners now looms over what was previously a typically low-rise town. My proposal aims to restore this previously modular domestic urban plan and along with it, the once thriving skills economy based around making and manufacturing. By proposing a community construction college delivering formal education in manual, craft-based industries I am allowing local people to benefit by obtaining employment from this development which is inevitably set to continue in this part of London.

The proposal introduces a gridded structural system to an existing, poorly treated yard space in the centre of Woolwich. It is this gridded structure which restores rhythm and a past regularity, absent since the decommission of the Woolwich Arsenal.

To maintain the heritage and an eclectic, collaged approach to urban development seen in Woolwich prior to the arrival of the developer, the proposal interacts with some on the existing buildings on site. At moments throughout the design process these collisions between old and new felt uncomfortable and crude, therefore it was important to embrace, them celebrate them and incorporate them into the building’s architecture. At moments in the plan existing brick walls can be seen to meet with newly proposed staircases, columns, and beams. These encounters represent the buildings collaged approach to urban development and the understanding that good sustainable urban placemaking should seek to evolve a place, adding to and adapting it to suit the current requirement rather than erasing and starting again.