Shoreditch, Spitalfields and Hoxton form part of London’s City Fringe, lying to the east and just outside the financial core of the capital. They combine to create a vibrant and diverse mixed use area; a key location for the creative industries, for small businesses serving the City’s financial institutions, for fashion and the arts, and for night-time uses. Spitalfields has undergone the most change, lying adjacent to the City’s boundaries; here, new offices and retail link with the fine grain urban character of adjacent early 18th Century streets, and their inventively re-used historic buildings. Shoreditch’s 19th Century former furniture warehouses are sympathetically converted for small businesses.

Here, and in Hoxton, new homes are being built on top of existing commercial buildings, while others with roof top additions provide gallery and studio space. ‘One-off’ private homes designed by new architectural talent also occupy formerly long vacant infill sites, sometimes alongside radically designed mixed use buildings executed by young practices but more often, next to a building unaltered for decades. In Hoxton too, and putting gentrification issues aside, the longstanding, ethnically diverse residents still live for the most part in recently renovated, historically significant social housing.

Spitalfields, Shoreditch and Hoxton continue to experience radical change, with regeneration projects bringing overwhelming benefits and new and extended buildings showcasing new architecture that is sometimes experimental but always sensitive to its location and local circumstances. The City Fringe is refreshing and exciting, largely because it successfully synthesises old and new, while maintaining townscape quality.

We organise architecture guided tours in London, up to custom made architecture programs for several days. Please contact us for more detailed information.

Architecture designed by David Adjaye, Terence Conran, Norman Foster, Maccreanor Lavington, Matthew Lloyd, Pentagram, Penoyre Prasad, Steven Taylor, Witherford Watson Mann a.o.