Canary Wharf

Go on a perceptive journey through London's Docklands, contrasting SOM’s iconic corporate landscape of Canary Wharf to the innovative and mixed-use approach of Wood Wharf. Highlights include One Canada Square, Jubilee Line station and One Park Place.

The tour will contrast SOM’s original early 80’s creation of a dockland ‘Mini Manhattan’ with stainless steel and glass corporate towers built on the quays between the redundant dock basins in the Isles of Dogs, East London, with Wood Wharf, the new mixed-use working and living urban district. Utilising a much looser fit, mixed use, ‘15-minute city’ approach for the new phase of the development aimed at the next generation of post corporate tech entrepreneurs and home traders.

There is now a real sense that we may have reached peak office (post COVID, many of the original steel and glass towers are under occupied due to hybrid working) so we will compare and contrast Canary Wharf Group’s latest venture with the original North American corporate big floorplate towers approach.

Canary Wharf highlights include:

• Robert Milligan former West India Docks 1802.

• Floating Pontoon Bridge, designed by Chris Wilkinson and Future Systems 1995

• One Canada Square designed by Cesar Pelli 1992

• Assorted office buildings by American architects including SOM, KPF and HOK, Norman Foster’s HSBC tower 2000.

• Newfoundland 62 floor housing tower by Horden Cherry Lee, 2021.

• Jubilee Line cathedral like station by Fosters 1999.

• Crossrail Place, Foster’s mixed use Crossrail station / roof garden 2016- 2022.

Canary Wharf Group, owned by Brookfield & Qatari Investment Authority, are currently building the first phases of Wood Wharf. The expansion was masterplanned by Allies and Morrison and features schemes by Stanton Williams, KPF, Darling Associates, Grid Architects and Patel Taylor, with the wider development eventually creating up to 3,200 new homes, 1,900,000m2 office space and 35,000m2 of retail floorspace, along with a community centre and a network of public squares.

Homes at Wood Wharf will range from Parkside townhouses to towers, with a mix of private and social housing. Its recently opened centrepiece is also the tallest building, a 211-metre 57-storey cylindrical residential skyscraper facing the waters of South Dock, designed by Herzog and de Meuron, the Swiss architects behind Tate Modern extension and the ‘Bird's Nest’ Olympic stadium in Beijing.

Wood Wharf highlights include:

• One Park Place – a stunning landmark 211-metre 57-storey cylindrical residential skyscraper by Herzog and de Meuron 2022.

• 10 Park Drive – 345 apartment block by Stanton Williams 2020.

• Floating Water Pavilion - Glen Howells Architects 2022.

Length of Tour: 2.5 hours

Please Note: This tour can be extended by also visiting the nearby Royal Docks and Greenwich Peninsular regeneration zones or the Olympic Legacy Walking Tour.