Shaping Change: 25 Years of Regeneration. The Architecture and Urbanism of Stockwool

This book presents the values and achievements of Stockwool since the practice was founded by Julian Stock and John Woolstencroft in 1989. This period that also coincided with a long and deep recession during which investment in regeneration projects in the UK was at a desperately low level. Stock and Woolstencroft, determined to work with developers in the public and private sectors to get scarce projects underway, adopted a speculative approach to researching opportunities from local authority land disposals, disused sites or industrial buildings and sourcing fundings to enable and encourage development and determine areas of social need that might be met by new re- generation. The first significant commissions were publicly funded infill projects, each resulting from persistence and tenacity in a desperate financial environment. The subsequent development of the practice has mirrored a dramatic change in attitude to living in the city. While a new generation was choosing the city over the suburbs, London’s industrial decline had left a wealth of redundant sites and buildings which, with imagination, could have provided desirable and well located homes, contributing over time to a renewal of declining areas. Stockwool secured several commissions for the design of dense urban housing on awkward post-industrial sites, requiring an ability to conjure up innovative residential layouts and sometimes striking forms. So began a long concern and involvement in the modern home that underpins the practice today