Brick Lane Threads

Client London Borough of Tower Hamlets
Location London, UK
Year 2017
Services Wayfinding, Placemaking, Brand & Visual Identity, Cartography, GIS, Urban Design

Despite being a well-connected, strategic location in East London, Brick Lane wasn’t capitalising on its full potential. Movement patterns generated by key local attractors (Spitalfields Market, the Truman Brewery, Petticoat Lane Market) only related to a short section of the street, and the lack of connectivity to the rest of the area disadvantaged businesses and residents.

Steer developed a high-level wayfinding strategy for Brick Lane to capture and spread the footfall along the entire street as well as turn Brick Lane into a key pedestrian north-south route, linking all the attractions in the area and reinforcing the street's competitiveness. Steer also identified a wide range of characterful, creative, and distinctive interventions to increase footfall and aid discovery and exploration including improvements to building facades, the development of a cultural trial through to larger scale projects including the design of a pocket park behind the Whitechapel Gallery.

The ambition is that this high-level strategy and the identified interventions should form part of a more robust strategy and scheme for wayfinding within the wider borough. Interventions focus on wayfinding but also consider other opportunities for public art and public realm improvement to support the area's legibility, connectivity and overall quality.

London Borough of Tower Hamlets have currently selected at least ten of these projects for development.