Hackney Wick co-living scheme: drainage and energy design notes for engineers
Reviewed by Joe Ashwell
First reported on The Construction Index
30 Second Briefing
Approval has been granted for McLaren Living’s Fish Island co-living scheme in Hackney Wick, completing the Neptune Wharf masterplan with 280 co-living studios and 44 affordable homes in two HTA Design blocks of ten and seven storeys. The fully car-free, cycle-first scheme incorporates rain gardens, bioswales and permeable paving for sustainable drainage, plus a central landscaped courtyard linking into the surrounding public realm and retaining mature boundary trees. Roof-mounted PV panels and an energy strategy targeting BREEAM Excellent signal a strong operational performance focus for dense urban residential design.
Technical Brief
- Two HTA Design buildings are fixed at ten and seven storeys, controlling massing and overshadowing.
- Proximity to Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and Victoria Park increases sensitivity to public-realm interface and views.
- New social co-working café and flexible pop-up event space require adaptable ground-floor structural grids and services.
- Central landscaped courtyard must function as both amenity space and pedestrian permeability route to wider Fish Island.
- Retention of mature boundary trees constrains basement extents, foundation positions and service trench alignments.
- Car-free designation shifts design emphasis to cycle storage, servicing bays and emergency-vehicle-only access geometry.
Our Take
McLaren Living’s role at Neptune Wharf follows its Oasis Birmingham build-to-rent scheme with Heim Global Investor and Winvic, signalling that it is building a national pipeline of mid- to high-density rental and co-living assets rather than one-off projects.
For the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, a 280-studio co-living block plus 44 affordable homes at Hackney Wick adds higher-density stock close to Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and Stratford Metropolitan Centre, which typically strengthens viability for active travel and low-car planning conditions in this part of east London.
Within our infrastructure coverage, relatively few of the 2,417 ‘Projects’ and ‘Sustainability’ pieces involve co-living at this scale in the United Kingdom, so Neptune Wharf will be a useful reference point for how London boroughs condition and monitor large shared-living schemes on design quality and management plans.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
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