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Here East

Catalyst for growth

The former press and broadcast centre for the 2012 Olympic Games has been transformed into a dedicated campus, for innovators, disruptors, visionaries and locals.

We broke down the immense scale of the development into human sized pieces, creating specialist spaces for big businesses and universities and beautifully small spaces for individuals and startups, all designed around communal areas that encourage creative sparks to fly.

Here East was designed to encourage collaboration, innovation and design. These themes are engrained within the original vision, from conception into development, through to the 4,500 people that now call Here East home. From big to small, software to hardware, the use of collaboration and the sharing of ideas has been a work process embraced by everyone.

Three dramatic suspended meeting pods break up the huge broadcast centre atria space. Each unique pod celebrates the makers movement and industrial heritage – steel mill, fabric factory, timber yard. The pods embody the Here East ethos of feeding imagination, creativity, collaboration and groundbreaking technology.

The pods were designed and manufactured in collaboration with ES Global; product information was generated using advanced parametric modelling, which was then sent straight to the CNC milling machine for fabrication – a unique design and construction process.

Independent data from Oxford Economics reveals that over the past decade, Here East has created over 10,300 employment opportunities, sustained £317million in wages and contributed £700million in GVA towards GDP in 2021. Over three quarters of survey respondents said their workforce had expanded because of being based at Here East. Nearly two thirds of businesses said their turnover or sales have grown. And almost all (99%) of tenants surveyed had collaborated with another business on the site, leading to improved knowledge sharing and the upskilling of employees.

Project details

Project name: Here East

Location: London, UK

Service: Digital design, Environmental Intelligence

Value: £50M – £100M

Scope: Architecture, Urban design

Clients: Here East, Infinity SDC, Delancey

Status: Complete

Completion date: 2018

Accreditation: BREEAM Excellent

Digital designer: Poke

Brand consultant: dn&co

Project management: Colliers International

Quantity surveyor / cost consultant: Gardiner and Theobald

Structural and M&E engineer: Buro Happold

Environmental engineer: Cundall

Landscape architect: LDA Landscape

Awards

RICS Social Impact Awards 2020
Project of the year - Winner

RICS Social Impact Awards 2020
Commercial - Winner

RIBA London Awards 2019
Regional Award - Winner

BCO National Awards 2018
Refurbished / Recycled Workplace - Winner

AJ100 Awards 2018
Building of the Year - Winner

AJ100 Awards 2018
Best Use of Technology - Winner

AJ Retrofit Awards 2018
Offices (over 10k sqm) - Winner

If you want to know more about our urban design and masterplanning work, contact Darryl Chen

If you want to know more about our workplace work, contact Nick Gaskell