The new Mulberry Academy sits within the London Dock by St George development, delivering hundreds of new homes and school places to the thriving London Borough of Tower Hamlets.
Within the wider Mulberry Academy – London Dock masterplan, the site was allocated for a six-form entry secondary school, as well as a 250-place sixth form centre. This provides much needed spaces for local children and young people, with an expected student number of 1,200 on a tight 0.5 hectare site.
Our vision was to deliver a cherished community asset which provides essential educational resources alongside community activities. Our designs draw on the site’s rich history and context – it lies between the local square of Merino Gardens and the A1203, on the site of vast former warehouses – to celebrate the character of the local area. Alongside its hyper-urban character, we also wanted to express native landscapes of shady woodland, marginal grasslands, and river edges which would once have inhabited this riverine area.
Our landscape proposals therefore seek to create natural systems to help mitigate the negative impacts to the school from its surrounding urban fabric – such as noise and pollution – as well as an environment supportive of local ecology, play, learning and work.
For such a compact site, our designs needed to focus on a multi-layered landscape with playgrounds, social and teaching spaces over numerous ground floor, podium, and roof levels. The multifaceted green infrastructure of new tree planting, green walls, lushly-filled raised planters and biodiverse roofs contributes massively to the area’s urban greening. It connects the site into its local biodiversity, as well as creating a calm, green environment for learners. A plethora of seating opportunities and open spaces provides for every young person, with the green setting encouraging a connection to plants and the outdoors.
BD’s involvement ran from concept to completion over eight busy years, where we enjoyed working closely with fellow disciplines to provide a really hard-working, three-dimensional landscape.
Client: Tower Hamlets
Architect: Architype
Landscape Budget: £750,000
Status: Completed in 2025
“I like how it’s very spacious, having a spacious environment gives you a spacious mind.”
Year 7 Student
