Hackney Bridge is a meanwhile project to provide incubator workspace for a range of creative people and organisations, combined with public facing event and food spaces, arranged around a central yard

Hackney Bridge is a meanwhile (or short-term) project to provide incubator space for a range of people and organisations, combined with public facing elements such as an event space and food hall, provided across five buildings arranged around a central yard. The site will eventually be developed as part of the Olympic Legacy Plan for housing, but the interim period of 12 years will allow the site to support start-ups and offer opportunities for local people on the Olympic Park and surrounding neighbourhoods.

Hackney Bridge is the third meanwhile project Turner Works have designed for Make Shift, following on from Pop Brixton and Peckham Levels. Meanwhile thinking focuses the mind and the approach is thus to try to do the most with the least; the least funds, materials, resources and time.

An intensive period of research and local consultation resulted in a design comprising five buildings. Each with a range of uses and scales of space centred around one main public yard, forming a new open campus off the canal towpath.

The three public-facing buildings are organised along the West boundary use a simple factory roof profile to create a ‘quayside’ to the canal. The two workspace buildings sit between this new row and the existing Copper Box Arena, containing a variety of workshops, co-working, shared offices and artist studios.

Every component of the building was considered with the pressures of budget and permanence in mind, and each building has been designed to be dismantled and either recycled or relocated (in whole or in part).

Now that Hackney Bridge is open, a diverse and varied mix of enterprises are making the project their home. Local enterprise remains at the core, 40% of founding Members live within 1 mile of the site and 84% from a neighbouring Growth Borough.