Meridian Water Meanwhile Masterplan — London → 5th Studio

Client
London Borough of Enfield

Collaborators
Jonathan Cook Landscape Architects / Urban Projects Bureau / Urban Space Management / Arup / Fulkers / NEF Consulting

Our role at Meridian Water – the London Borough of Enfield’s flagship regeneration project – has been to lead on the creation of a meanwhile and interim masterplan, and to deliver key building projects and public realm components.

The Meanwhile Masterplan, together with delivery of key interim building and public realm projects, supports the delivery of the long-term Meridian Water Masterplan — one of the largest regeneration projects in Europe, providing 10,000 new homes and thousands of jobs over a 20 year timescale. The evolving Meanwhile Masterplan is playing a major role in this transformation, informing decision-making and change on the ground to make Meridian Water ‘great from day one’. The work is already shifting perceptions, scaling up existing and embedding new vibrant uses, and improving connectivity.

Alongside developing the broader interim strategy, 5th Studio are also leading the design of a series of building projects forming part of Meridian Works – LB Enfield’s initiative to place creative manufacturing at the heart of the emerging mix of uses at Meridian Water.

Meridian Water - London Borough of Enfield’s flagship regeneration project at the heart of the Lea Valley

Shortlisted for PLANNING / Masterplans and area-wide regeneration strategies that create entire new parts of the city.

A network of meanwhile projects and connections supporting the site’s transformation over time

Meanwhile Masterplan Strategic Opportunities - A strategic set of opportunities underpins the meanwhile proposals and the landscape and movement network strategy

The Meridian Water Meanwhile Masterplan establishes an adaptive approach that bridges between the existing ecologies of the site and ambitious transformation over time. As such it swerves the cliches of meanwhile projects, pump-priming Meridian Water as a rich, well-integrated piece of city, with interim uses that range across workspace, retail, film production, markets, leisure and events, including the Field Day festival. The strategy actively guides decision-making, testing interim opportunities for placemaking and economic and employment benefit while delivering a movement network connecting three emerging clusters:

Meridian Market - focussed on the Station and the new High Street
Meridian Fields - making the most of the site’s green and blue assets
Meridian Works - a focus for creative production and employment

The strategy paves the way for longer-term employment, integrating Construction and Media Skills Academies and building social value and delivery capacity. Sustainability is at the strategy’s heart, targeting low-cost high-impact opportunities, realising maximum benefit from investment in infrastructure and site assembly, and championing adaptive re-use of assets.

The meanwhile masterplan is highly integrated with the broader employment, cultural and environmental sustainability strategies for the wider masterplan project, providing a framework for steering and appraising social value and sustainability outputs. The meanwhile work advocates for adaptive re-use of buildings, materials and landscape assets playing a key role, and being aligned with Circular Economy principles. Meanwhile employment and connectivity benefits, are also being actively reviewed and steered via integration within the Council’s ‘federated’ geo-spatial information model.