Working inside the box

Containerisation triggered the demise of the docks and it is ironic that these big steel boxes are now helping to revitalise an area elderly Eastenders still call plain Poplar, but which earnest planners are keen to reinvent as Poplar Riverside.

The container offices occupy part of a 12-acre mixed-use development bordering the River Lea.

It is classic regeneration land, with redundant warehousing and a slice of architectural heritage in the shape of the former Poplar Library - a listed Edwardian gem - plus an equally prized Tudor building called Bromley Hall.

Already the old library has been restored to provide 6,000sq ft of low-cost (about £15 a sq ft) office space aimed at start-ups and growing businesses. Bromley Hall is soon to get the same treatment.

Leaside Regeneration, a private agency, has put together the masterplan - nearly 200,000sq ft of offices and light industrial space, 74 live/work units, 337 flats, a 60-bedroom hotel, health centre and shops.

Two bridges over the River Lea will provide pedestrian and cycle routes linking Tower Hamlets and Newham, and a new DLR station is planned at Langdon Park. Bromley-by-Bow Tube is a 10-minute walk.

The agency talks bullishly about creating a "new quarter", but the real objective is to integrate the area with the new Docklands - Canary Wharf and the Royal Docks, where ExCel, the modern exhibition centre, is proving a development catalyst. And let us not forget that the lower Lea Valley is pivotal to London's bid for the 2012 Olympics.

The office containers are in two blocks of 12, three storeys high, with a couple of containers turned on their end to form staircases.

Each measures 40 ft by 8 ft, providing 320sq ft of space (easily enough for a two-person office). They are dry-lined and come fully serviced, with electricity and water supplied. Other facilities such as toilets and parking will be on site.

Occupiers will be able to join containers together to provide bigger spaces. The units will be offered on short-term lets (from about three months) likely to start at not much more than £100 a week.

Container offices, even container homes, are an efficient way of utilising marginal land, says Eric Reynolds, head of Leaside Regeneration. They are cheap to buy (less than £1,000). You can insulate them, cut holes for windows, bolt them together and pile them up. As relatively lightweight structures, they don't require deep pile foundations.

As a result, it is possible to produce a decent quality studio space for about £30 a sq ft as opposed to more than £100 a sq ft for similar space built by conventional methods.

Reynolds is a veteran regeneration expert. Responsible for setting up Camden Lock open-air market in the early Seventies he has been an influential voice in Docklands since the early Eighties. Reynolds now operates from a converted timber warehouse at the mouth of the River Lea and close to the first container village he created at Trinity Buoy Wharf.

This he acquired for the princely sum of £1 - sold to him by the London Docklands Development Corporation on the basis that the site would be used for creative and artistic purposes - an enlightened decision for a bulldozer-led agency.

His Urban Space Management company has a 120-year lease and pays 25 per cent of profits to a trust. Income comes from film location companies, City firms hiring corporate entertainment space and, of course, the several dozen artists who rent container studios. The tenants pay £6 a sq ft.

Reynolds is certainly a man with a mission. Another of his local container projects is at a sixth-form college in Tower Hamlets. Also in the pipeline is a scheme of live/work containers in Hackney, a nursery school and a gallery. "Container accommodation has enormous potential. Little pockets of derelict land in the inner-city that have zero value could be brought into use - for key-worker housing, for example," he says.

Rather mischievously, Reynolds has taken to submitting planning applications on land that has been left abandoned, sometimes merely to shame local councils into taking action and considering plans for its regeneration.

For more details, contact Leaside Regeneration on 020 8980 0111 and Urban Space Management on 020 7515 7153 or visit www.urbanspace.com.