Equipment Works, Walthamstow – Projects

Equipment Works consists of the redevelopment of the Forest Works site in Walthamstow providing a residential led mixed-use development containing over 300 residential units and 1,750sqm of commercial floor space with external spaces including hard and soft landscaping and access roads.

The development is separated into two buildings; the Main Building and Workshop Building. The Main Building comprises the residential units in reinforced concrete framing up to ten storeys high. Serving as a Forest Road gateway to the wider residential site, the Workshop Building comprises flexible areas suitable for either retail or restaurant use on the ground floor with flexible office space above. This lightweight steel building includes the use of profiled rigid steel roof frames expressing the architectural form of the building both internally and externally.

With part of the site located in a high risk flood zone, careful consideration was needed to ensure that the internal building level was raised suitably above flood design levels whilst also maintaining existing external levels. Detailed collaboration was undertaken with the Architect and Landscape Architect to resolve these opposing requirements ensuring that the design would not be compromised.

SuDS techniques were implemented throughout the development to manage surface water on this large urban site to limit overall discharge to only greenfield rates with the use of a combined blue roof/green roof system, below ground attenuation, and permeable paving.