SHAPING CHANGE 25 YEARS OF URBAN REGENERATION

Skrevet af STOCK

This book presents the values and achievements of Stockwool since the
practice was founded by Julian Stock and John Woolstencroft in 1989.
This period that also coincided with a long and deep recession during
which investment in regeneration projects in the UK was at a desperately
low level. Stock and Woolstencroft, determined to work with developers
in the public and private sectors to get scarce projects underway,
adopted a speculative approach to researching opportunities from local
authority land disposals, disused sites or industrial buildings and
sourcing fundings to enable and encourage development and determine
areas of social need that might be met by new re- generation. The first
significant commissions were publicly funded infill projects, each
resulting from persistence and tenacity in a desperate financial
environment. The subsequent development of the practice has mirrored a
dramatic change in attitude to living in the city. While a new
generation was choosing the city over the suburbs, London’s industrial
decline had left a wealth of redundant sites and buildings which, with
imagination, could have provided desirable and well located homes,
contributing over time to a renewal of declining areas. Stockwool
secured several commissions for the design of dense urban housing on
awkward post-industrial sites, requiring an ability to conjure up
innovative residential layouts and sometimes striking forms. So began a
long concern and involvement in the modern home that underpins the
practice today