Huge numbers of vital workshops have been lost to higher-return housing. But one architect is creating budget spaces by building upwards – with wood. We meet the busy tenants of his £5m Workstack
A stack of blocks teeters on the side of a busy road in Charlton, London, like a pile of shipping containers freshly offloaded from the nearby Thames. It is an arresting sight in this area of builders’ merchants and big box retail stores, each block thrusting out above the one below as if the whole pile might topple any minute. A roadside facade of dark grey corrugated metal suggests it has an industrial function, while the ends of the blocks gleam with translucent polycarbonate, giving it the look of a rock that has been sliced open to reveal its sparkly crystal innards.
“We wanted to create an eye-catching beacon,” says Michael Finlay, standing outside the new £5m Workstack. “It’s a marker to say that space for making is here to stay – and we’re not giving in to the march of developers and their luxury flats.”
