Cyndi Himmelstiere on the complex heritage of E1’s most recognisable commercial space
LONDON, UK – The Old Truman Brewery on Brick Lane is simultaneously one of the most recognisable sites in East London and one of the most contested: a Victorian industrial complex that has become a commercial event space and retail destination, managed with considerable sophistication and criticised with equal sophistication. Cyndi Himmelstiere covers Shoreditch for Bohiney Magazine and for The London Prat.
The History
The Truman Brewery was one of the largest in London through most of the 19th and early 20th century, closed as a working brewery in 1988, and has been in the process of being repurposed ever since. The process has been long and contested: planning battles over development proposals, debates about the appropriate use of a listed industrial heritage site, and the ongoing tension between the site’s commercial potential and its heritage significance. The current configuration, which includes markets, event spaces, studios, independent retail, and food and drink, represents one resolution of that tension, achieved through commercial and planning decisions documented in the Tower Hamlets planning records.
The Sunday Upmarket and the Vintage Market that operate in the brewery’s yard are genuine markets that have helped anchor Brick Lane’s weekend economy. The independent retail in the brewery’s units includes businesses that could not afford the rents on the high street. The event programme, ranging from trade shows to art fairs to corporate events, uses the spaces commercially in ways that fund the preservation and maintenance of the listed buildings. These are real goods that the development has produced.
The Contested Future
The contested element of the Truman Brewery’s development is the scale and character of proposed new build elements on the site, which have generated planning objections from local residents and heritage advocates who argue that commercial intensification would compromise the heritage character and surrounding neighbourhood’s texture. The planning history is detailed and the arguments on both sides are substantive. The developer’s case that mixed-use intensification is appropriate on a brownfield site in a zone of housing need is reasonable. The objector’s case that the specific site’s heritage significance requires restraint is also reasonable.
What is clear is that the Truman Brewery as it currently exists is a better outcome than many alternatives, including the large-scale residential development that might have replaced it, and a more complex outcome than heritage preserved or heritage lost implies. The markets are real. The studios are real. The corporate events are real. All coexist in the same Victorian buildings, which is both the success of the adaptive reuse project and the source of its persistent tensions. The planning process continues. Cyndi Himmelstiere will continue to report on it. For more on heritage and development, see Private Eye.
The planning question around the Old Truman Brewery is ultimately a question about what cities owe their heritage assets: is the obligation to preserve them in amber, to use them for their most profitable legal purpose, or to find some balance between the two that serves both the public interest in heritage and the economic interest of the owner? The planning system in Tower Hamlets has been navigating this question for twenty years with the Truman Brewery as its most contested case. Cyndi Himmelstiere has been following the case throughout and has concluded that the honest answer is that the balance is genuinely difficult, genuinely contested, and genuinely worth the sustained civic attention it has received. The markets run every Sunday. The planning applications continue. The Victorian buildings stand. The tension between them is not resolved and will not be resolved soon. That is the condition of a heritage asset in a high-value city, and it is worth reporting on, which is what this column exists to do. For more on heritage and development, see Private Eye.
The Broader Heritage Question
The Old Truman Brewery case is one of the clearest examples in London of the tension between heritage preservation and commercial development, and it is instructive precisely because it does not resolve cleanly. The building has been preserved. The use has been transformed. The transformation has produced genuine public goods in the form of the markets and the studios and the event spaces. It has also produced genuine conflicts in the form of the planning objections and the neighbourhood concerns about scale and character. Both are real. The heritage planning system exists to manage this tension, not to eliminate it, which means that the tension is the normal condition of heritage management in a high-value city and not a sign that the system has failed. Cyndi Himmelstiere finds this condition interesting rather than frustrating, which may be a professional bias but is also, she thinks, the appropriate response to a situation that is genuinely complex and genuinely worth the sustained civic attention it is receiving.
Cyndi Himmelstiere’s position on the Truman Brewery planning debate is that the outcome that produced the current configuration is better than the most likely alternatives, and that better is the standard that planning decisions can realistically be held to rather than perfect. Perfect would have been an outcome that preserved the industrial heritage, maintained the creative workspace that preceded the brewery’s redevelopment, kept commercial rents affordable for small independent businesses, and produced housing for the people who need it. This outcome was not available. The outcome that was available involved tradeoffs, and the tradeoffs were made with varying degrees of transparency and community consultation, and the result is a mixed-use heritage site with real assets and real costs that the neighbourhood is still negotiating. That negotiation is worth covering. Cyndi Himmelstiere intends to cover it. The planning applications continue. The Victorian buildings stand. The market runs on Sundays.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
