New homes in east London: creatives are coming to Docklands tempted by warehouse-style flats, a neighbouring artists' colony and a riverbus commute

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David Spittles21 June 2017

Goodluck Hope, a new Docklands neighbourhood, is unveiled this week, one of the last elements of an ambitious regeneration programme at Leamouth Peninsula, formed by a bend in the River Lea before it drops into the Thames just east of Canary Wharf.

In this booming part of east London, a community with 800 homes and a riverside cultural centre is being created. A riverbus pier is being built to connect this new address to the City and central London, adding a traditional mode of transport to the area’s fast-improving rail links.

Architecturally the design of the development is back to the future, with brick-clad warehouse-style buildings rather than shiny glass-and-steel. The name Goodluck Hope is taken from medieval shipping maps of London.

Surrounded by water on three sides, the site borders historic Trinity Buoy Wharf, where a live-work artists’ colony exists, with recording studios and an office campus created from disused shipping containers alongside the capital’s only remaining Victorian lighthouse.

Affordable workspace: Trinity Buoy Wharf is near Goodluck Hope
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AUTHENTIC DOCKLANDS

In its 19th-century heyday, the shipyard was one of the British Empire’s “workshops of the world”, bustling with tradesmen, a heritage that developer Ballymore seeks to revive by “creating an environment where creative individuals and companies come together to meet, work and share ideas”.

There is already a vigour about this district. It has a certain local vibe, an authenticity that much of the Docklands of the Eighties lacks, being a working section of the river, with tug boats and commercial vessels as well as having a primary school. Here, too, incongruously perhaps, is The Royal Drawing School, founded in 2000 by the Prince of Wales.

A central street lined on one side by townhouses with “atelier” spaces for homeworkers will cut through the scheme, while a listed dry dock, with its structure re-formed to the outline of a great cruise liner, is to become a social amenity.

Dry Dock: the listed re-formed dry dock is a reminder of the area's industrial past

Another dockside block, at the end of a new promenade, will house a spa and swimming pool, café and restaurants, a microbrewery, cinema and wifi-enabled work zone. Between the buildings will be small parks and passageways, while views across and along the river are spectacular.

INDUSTRIAL CHIC

Interior design is inspired by industrial lofts, in open-plan apartments with factory-like floor-to-ceiling

Crittall windows. Prices start at £335,000 for one-bedroom flats. Call 020 7637 0800. Completion is due in 2020.

Ballymore expects to benefit from nearby London City Island, an ambitious award-winning project, formerly a margarine works, proving a hit with home buyers and high-profile arts organisations. English National Ballet and London Film School have relocated to dazzling new headquarters there. Bond Street is only 20 minutes away on the Jubilee line.

For finance workers, Canary Wharf is only a four-minute ride on the Tube. Yet artists, writers and animators are among the 650 people who have already moved into the 1,700-home complex, says communications director Hayleigh O’Farrell. “What’s really surprised us is that people have moved here from Battersea, Chelsea, Hackney and Southwark. They see it as an attractive place to be.”