Mocklands

Defined by its overwhelm of form, wind-stricken promenades and long bare edges, Docklands is a prime example of city homogenisation. Completely reinvented over the last 30 years, Docklands fell victim to greenfield site treatment by government and developers, erasing the fine grain public realm ecology cultivated by communities and culture over time.

Today Docklands exists paradoxically - its public face emanates an emptiness, a sense of something missing yet it is full of form by some of our greatest architects. Issues of homogeneity affect all “instant cities” and are too wide spread for a single response to fix. It is therefore not about “fixing” but rather beginning to unpick and recode the existing systems to be read in a new way.

Mocklands seeks to undermine homogeneity by process of subverting edges, introducing porosity and creating a presence of history. Challenging conditions that deny ecology, culture and community, it permeates rigid public and private thresholds, reintroducing layers of the past to create ambiguous new territories. These territories are a reconfiguring of existing systems, creating co-existing conditions that foster natural and human ecologies.

Mocklands introduces an architecture of intersection and phenomenological immersion. Docklands is no longer a place where you show up and go, it is a place you are a part of, that you interface with and that you experience.