Hackney Wick, London- Heritage Replacement Building and Change of Use
Iceland Wharf
Heritage Replacement Building for Commercial Office Use
Scheme
Change of use and replacement of the former 19th C Victorian Ammonia Works Warehouse
Location
London
Planning permission was obtained in August 2024 which sought the replacement of the former 19th Century Ammonia Works warehouse of equivalent scale and massing at Iceland Wharf. Contextually, Iceland Road is situated nearby the London Olympic Stadium and is a former brownfield site with newly built surrounding high rise residential apartments recently constructed.
This was an isolated application for a standalone building which is sited between a separate planning permission entailing wider mixed-use redevelopment proposals upon the wider Iceland Wharf site. This includes permission for seven new buildings consisting of commercial floorspace and 120 residential units.
The former Ammonia Works is not a listed building but is considered to be of heritage significance. Preservation of the Victorian industrial past with a new commercial office use formed the brief, leaving the industrial red brick and slate roof shell. Due to the structural instability of the building, much of the existing fabric could not be retained and required to be replaced with materials to match.
The replacement architectural details such as window fenestrations, glazing types, stone cills and segmented arched window headers were features that had to be retained and sympathetically replaced.
The only main fenestration change on the principal front elevation was the introduction of a new front entrance.
Part of the permission required the internal wall of the adjoining new-build commercial building to have a glazed frontage allowing the exposed south west brick gable wall of the Ammonia Works to be maintained when viewed from Iceland Road. This was a key planning requirement.
The south west gable wall to be visually exposed through the glazed frontage of the adjoining commercial building.
Structural instability of the former Ammonia Works building.
Existing and proposed Iceland Road frontage elevation.
