A waterside community
LIVING
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Plans for Dockside Canada Water address the dual needs for student accommodation and affordable housing in this rapidly changing area of southeast London, without sacrificing the quality of either. It brings a mix of tenures together to create a place that everyone can call home: a sleek tower paired with a brick L-shaped block, generous gardens and new public space.
Nenad Manasijevic, Principal Director
In 2025, Southwark Council approved plans for Dockside Canada Water’s Plot B, initially developed by Art-Invest Real Estate, to provide a distinctive mix of new student accommodation, affordable homes, shops and community space. Dockside is the commercial gateway to British Land’s 53-acre neighbourhood in Canada Water, the most significant town centre to be developed in London in 50 years. The project aims to create something uniquely of its place, a new quarter surrounded by 130 acres of green and blue space with places to work, live and meet by the water’s edge.
Plot B, designed by TP Bennett, comprises two residential buildings. One provides 742 new student rooms, the other 79 new affordable homes; a mix of tenures carefully calibrated to respond to demand in the borough. The high-rise student building makes a virtue of its corner plot, rising like the prow of a ship as it curves to point to the water.
Its volume is broken down by a setback and garden terrace above the podium. At ground floor, a colonnade of double-height retail helps to bring the streets to life and a central courtyard with a new community hub becomes a flexible place to meet. The lower-rise residential building defines the western edge of the plot. As well as deep balconies, residents share a generous roof terrace and variation in brick is used to add texture to the streetscape and give the building a more domestic scale.
The approach has been resident-led, with the design process examining and responding to the way future students, new homeowners and existing residents will want to live. For example, convenient pedestrian routes to local transport hubs weave through the site, improving local connections and embedding the new quarter as part of the city.
The project is also ambitious in its environmental approach, with an emphasis on sustainable, enduring design. The wider scheme involves the transformation of the eastern dock, reconnecting the whole neighbourhood with the waterfront.
Nick Rutherford, Director
