Four hundred hectares, phased over nineteen years
The site held eleven thousand tonnes of contaminated ground, a functioning boatyard that wanted to stay, and a flood defence built in 1968 that was now two thirds of a metre below the design tide. None of those are planning problems. All three of them arrive at once.
We drew it as four overlapping grids: the street grid, the flood grid, the utility grid and the phase grid. The first three are permanent and public. The fourth is the only one that was allowed to be provisional, which is how a nineteen-year build kept a shipyard, a market and two football pitches trading while the ground changed underneath them.
Dock 4 retention
Problem
The boatyard was the only part of the site generating revenue during construction, but it sat exactly where the new quay line needed to be.
Drawing
The quay line was moved 60 m and the retained basin was re-rated as a wet dock, which let the boatyard trade through every phase and turned a planning objection into the scheme's most popular argument.
Eastern flood line
Problem
Raising the 1968 defence to a modern design tide would have cut the ground floor off half the quarter's existing housing.
Drawing
Instead of a wall, we built a threshold: a raised public ground with steps down into a floodable park, so the defence level and the housing level stopped being the same line.