The Gantry @ Here East
Innovative affordable studios and creative work space in hackney wick
Architecture 00 worked together with 00 venture Wikihouse and Hawkins/ Brown to design 23 new studios on The Gantry at Here East.
The Gantry is a gigantic structure on the side of the Broadcast Centre on Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, which was originally built as a temporary home for machinery needed during the 2012 London Olympics.
After the games, everything was stripped out leaving behind an exposed gridded structure that would form a part of Here East, London's home for making. Posed with an interesting design challenge, we worked with Hawkins/ Brown to create something incredible: a 21st century cabinet of curiosities.
00 and Wikihouse designed and delivered the studio frames and interiors, which were constructed from CNC-routed modular timber components manufactured through Wikihouse’s open source, digital building technologies, which permitted a wide range of designs with a mix of single-storey and duplex units.
This was the first build of its kind at this scale, using open source Wikihouse technology twinned with parametric coding tools, the component parts for the 23 pods were digitally written as code, locally manufactured in a CNC workshop, moved to The Gantry and then assembled on site.
Client: Here East
Location: Olympic Park, Hackney Wick, London
Architecture 00
WikiHouse
Hawkins\Brown
Construction Period: 6 months
Budget: £1.2m
Area: 1000m2
AWARDS
Winner of the AJ100 Building of the Year award
Press
Hackney Wick’s Rich Heritage
The Gantry is inspired by the rich artistic heritage of Hackney Wick. Made up of 23 individual artist studios which sit across two levels, each studio tells a story with cladding inspired by everything from Lesney Matchbox Toys to Fridge Mountain.
A ‘Joyous’ Place to Work
Since completion, the studios have been hugely popular with high occupancy and a commitment to 80% of the studios being reserved for creative businesses based in Hackney Wick & Fish Island. The studios are operated by The Trampery, who describe the Gantry as ‘a joyous experiment in utilising open space to provide low-cost studios for local creative businesses.
Thanks to Rory Gardiner for use of imagery