London Docklands

Throughout the world in the last thirty years, docks have been closed and docklands redeveloped. This book focuses on London's docklands, regenerated since 1981 with the help of the London Docklands Development Corporation. The gradual growth of Thames-side wharves and the building of the great enclosed docks after 1800 have left a rich legacy of pioneering dock structures grafted on to, and transforming, a venerable riverside pattern. Two Baroque Hawksmoor churches, St George-in-the-East and St Anne, Limehouse, belong to old riverside communities where Victorian warehouses stand cheek-by-jowl with Georgian houses, achools and churches. The great warehouses near Tower Bridge have been imaginatively converted to form new urban quarters enjoyed by tourists and Londoners. Exciting new architecture can be found from Bermondsey, where CZWG's bright-red China Wharf contrast with sensitive infill by Michael Hopkins, to East India Docks, with its high-tech buildings by Rogers and Grimshaw. Over all, the beacon of Cesar Pelli's gleaming tower advertises Canary Wharf, that slice of North America on the Isle of Dogs and a landmark for the whole of the evolving Docklands.
Elizabeth Williamson provides an enlightening record of the historical character of the Docklands as well as describing the new and vital changes in recent architecture. With the aid of numerous text figures and excellent photographs (many of them specially taken by the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments), this book provides a valuable and handy guide as well as a reference tool enhanced by extensive indexes and a glossary.