The current redevelopment of the former Spitalfield market area is about the City expanding into the East End and, in the process, demolishing parts of a former fruit and vegetable market founded in 1683 whose current buildings are from around 1928. (The landlord of the property is the Corporation of London — the City — and the Planning Authority is Tower Hamlets.) When originally proposed, the market buildings were neglected and unwanted. But un-suited entrepreneurial interests alien to financial trading started to provide food-stalls and the like in the old buildings; then there was a temporary opera facility… (the market recently claimed to enjoy more visitors than the Tate Modern). What developers seemed incapable of providing was happening all on its own. But instead of embracing this, they bluntly promoted their instrumental mind-set and there began a controversy with the community which still continues in a zone mediating between Broadgate and the utterly different (but changing) nature of the area around Brick Lane (some of which includes gentrified late C17th. terraces such as Fournier Street, together with Nicholas Hawksmoor’s recently renovated Christ Church).
The EPR-designed office building on Bishopsgate (immediately opposite Broadgate and the entrance to Liverpool Street station) is nearly 26,000 sq. m., was the first of the post-recession redevelopment (1999) and is in marked contrast to the architectural Post-Modernism of Broadgate, revealing the change in developers’ tastes in the intervening period. The shape reflects planning constraints that allowed height on Bishopsgate and required low mass on the Spitalfield side. And, in 2000, Foggo Associates completed an 18,550 sq. m. office building called 280 Bishopsgate, north of the EPR building. (Foggo was a design partner at Arup Associates and in charge of their contribution to Broadgate.) But the heart of the redevelopment is a large Foster scheme of some 70,000sq. m. of offices and 4,700 sq. m. of retail space called 1 and 10 Bishops Square, E1. This has, for a long time, been at the centre of a heated debate about change in the area which bears parallels with the battle seen at Covent Garden in the early ‘70’s, and later at Coin Street.
Lyons Sleaman and Hoare are responsible for refurbishing the remaining market spaces.
Above right: plans of the Foster building at Spitalfields. The scheme cleverly seeks to mediate between Broadgate and the market, between instrumentally – minded capitalist financiers and the Bangladeshi community of Brick Lane, effectively extending the City eastward (a continuation of an expansionist theme noticeable since the mid-1980’s). Inevitably, this changes values, customs, and the culture of the area, particularly within the old market itself. The base of the Foster design fulfils a disguise function to some of the more harsh contrasts of this equation: retail and market below, wrapping two sides of the building (complete with a public art management programme); huge office spaces above (for City lawyers). The scheme is strategically clever, but (as happens too often with a Foster building) it is let down by its detailed execution as opposed to its strategic intent. The place isn’t exactly a comfort zone. But see it. Walk, for example, from Broadgate, through Spitalfields to Fournier Street and Brick Lane, and beyond to David Adjaye’s Idea Store and to Alsop’s building at the Royal London Hospital.