Meanwhile Projects at the Carpenters Estate

The Steel Warriors calisthenics gym made of steel recycled from knives taken off the streets of London

Carpenters Estate Strategy for Meanwhile projects that create a legacy

On largescale regenerations, such as the Carpenters Estate, Meanwhile projects have a vital role in creating temporary areas, projects and buildings that fill the gaps created by the long timeframe. 

With a 15 year timespan, Populo Living wanted to create a strategy around these Meanwhile projects that would provide much-needed community facilities, with a legacy approach to ensure these deliver on the long-term. 

The strategy explores how temporary interventions could start improving life for residents now, and shape the estate of the future. Led by local priorities as established during masterplanning, and aligning with Newham’s and Populo's Community Wealth Building agenda, the strategy identifies the forms of meanwhile use with the greatest potential positive impact, and maps these into the available spaces and times in the masterplan.

Residents fed into the project to reflect the type of projects and uses they would like to see on their estate. The strategy ensured that these projects weren't just buzzy pop-ups that disappeared, but lasted the life of the project and beyond, providing real benefits to local people. 

London Festival of Architecture

As part of the annual London Festival of Architecture, Populo organised an event to share a range of stakeholder voices involved in re-imagining the Carpenters Estate, including how the community shaped the Meanwhile Projects to create a lasting legacy.

The In dialogue – creating transformative Meanwhile Projects at the Carpenters, event involved a tour of the projects finishing at the Carpenters Dialogue Express Café – a new Meanwhile space cafe created in a repurposed train carriage. Managed by social enterprise Dialogue Hub, the cafe trains local people with hearing impairments to be baristas.

Speakers:

Yanni Pitsillides, Architect & Area Regeneration Manager, London Borough of Newham
Clare Neilson, Project Manager at Populo Living,
Jan Kattein, Director Jan Kattein Architects,
Jen Storan, Projects Director, Meanwhile Space,
Hakan Elbir, CEO of Dialogue Hub, and
Carpenters Estate resident Adeel

 

The Masterplan

Read about the £1bn outline masterplan for The Carpenters Estate – London’s largest estate restoration and regeneration scheme

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