The Republic Masterplan rebrands the walled off East India Docks; including the Import & Export Buildings and adjoining Public Realm to create a new destination and identity to the area.

The Republic Masterplan rebrands the formerly known East India Dock, a collection of ten-storey tired 1990s granite clad post-modern offices. The overall objective was to rethink, re-imagine, re-brand and renew the office campus that was struggling to attract tenants. Republic is seen not only as a location for a new way of working, but the way working should be.

The Import and Export Building’s ground floors include a diverse range of typologies that foster a strong identity and culture for the site as the atriums spill into adjacent mixed use amenity areas, such as a ground floor gym, a creche, a bakery, a cafe and a whisky bar. On the upper levels; large floor-plans have become a mixed-use culture hotbed of office adjacent to education space.

At the heart of each building the existing atriums have been infilled and re-animated with informal meeting spaces, collaborative work zones and the insertion of break-out spaces. The exterior public realm acts as a continuation to create a space for outdoor meetings, to provide respite and a location for office-cafe culture to sprawl into. Extensive initiatives for developing ecology and biodiversity have had significant urban greenery contributions including the pedestrianisation of the existing roadway to become a vibrant, green public realm landscape.

The materiality to refurbished areas is key to the architectural response. The development was stripped back to the reinforced concrete structural frame and the inserted timber infill structure has been fully exposed and expressed to create a striking, tactile and honest contrast. The extensive use of modular CLT timber elements provides a warm, natural and healthy aesthetic not usually found within office space. Both buildings store more than 1.5 times the carbon used to build them.

Further on-site Wellness initiatives include a ground floor gym and an extensive planted roof terrace. A “Wellness Director” organises events including; rooftop yoga, a gardening club, street food and outdoor films. An initial assessment predicted a “Gold” WELL standard.

Studio RHE Architects have been working in close conjunction with the client Trilogy on the Republic Masterplan since 2015; In that time the project brief has adapted numerous times to both new ways of working and what makes a destination desirable to work and go to. Re-imagining the plain and secluded 1990’s development within it’s larger discrete data centre surroundings; has involved investigating what the market wants and ways in which to retrofit the area with new construction technologies such as CLT; responding in phases with an adaptive, creative, sustainable design that can deliver a new locality with its own self-sustaining culture; with wellness at its central core.

Richard Hywel Evans - Director Studio RHE Architects