NLA Walking Tour: Introduction to... Shoreditch

Discover Shoreditch, London’s creative urban neighbourhood with an ever-changing supply of start-ups, independent cafes, underground clubs, event spaces and pop-up retail. This area of east London is undergoing unprecedented transformation through infrastructure, innovation and mixed-use development.

This area of east London continues to undergo unprecedented transformation, through infrastructure, innovation and mixed-use development. In recent years, Shoreditch has welcomed a host of major new schemes like Principal Place (Foster + Partners) - the old High Street’s first residential tower and the 100-year-old iconic Tea Building factory (AHMM) and more workshops, studios and boutique hotels by architects Duggan Morris, Witherford Watson Mann, Conran and Partners among others.

David Adjaye’s landmark visual arts gallery in Rivington Place confirmed the area’s serious credentials. Large-scale, 1960s retrofits like the expanded Ace Hotel by EPR and more recently Arnold House by Buckley Grey Yeoman enjoy extended new life on the main streets. The warehouse aesthetic is underlined by the Curtain Hotel pastiche by Dexter Moren, complete with a roof pool. Close by on Curtain Road is a mammoth-sized new residential and office development The Stage by Perkins+Will - so named for Shakespeare’s weighty associations with the area. New build, low-rise flexible workspaces like Frames by Squire and Partners and the Japanese-themed ‘fragmented’ Nobu Hotel by Ron Arad/Ben Adams, confirm the area’s new sophisticated status as it segues into the new configuration of Old Street Roundabout by Weston Williamson + Partners and overlooked by the large-scale retrofitted White Collar Factory and Bower schemes, both by AHMM.

This walk is led by blue badge guide, Marc Zakian

Start: Shoreditch High Street Overground Station entrance
End: Old Street Station

Duration: 2 hours approx.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

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Host or Publisher New London Architecture