Malt Street
- Client: Berkeley Homes
- Contacts: Euan MacGillivray, Andrew Long, Michał Affanasowicz, Michał Sęczkowski, Dorota Knet
This mixed-use regeneration scheme opens up a landlocked, poor-quality industrial site creating permeable links via a new linear park and large civic square. Around the public routes are eleven carefully placed buildings which range in height from five to 44 storeys. The scheme provides for new and existing communities.
Malt Street comprises up to 1,300 new homes, 4,500 sqm of light industrial space and 2,500 sqm of other commercial space. In addition, around 400 new permanent jobs will be created. Other major benefits for the area include new arts spaces, improvements to local play facilities and a new central civic square.
The development forms an important part of the vision for the Old Kent Road Opportunity Area which Southwark Council has set out in the Area Action Plan.
The outset of the new masterplan was heavily guided by connecting the existing roads and streets, currently closed-off by physical barriers, land uses and level changes. The most important element of the new links was the re-establishing of the east-west connection along the location of the former Grand Surrey Canal, which became the spine of the development.
After defining the main vehicle and pedestrian connections, the building lines were formed through establishing a balanced relationship between open and built space. Through implementation of secondary roads and streets new building plots were formed.
Following the new building grid, a proposed hierarchy strategy defined function and character of the new streetscapes. The route of the former Grand Surrey Canal is re-established as the linear park, connecting Burgess Park with the main Old Kent Road. Around the centre of the plot it is crossed by the secondary, north-south link.
Where the two main routes; north-south and east-west, intersect, a new square is formed, as the centre-point of the new development. Proposed commercial uses along the Old Kent Road continue inwards along the linear park to guide towards the square.
