ArchitectureLondon & Vienna & Hilversum · Launching this year
London’s old gasholders keep finding new lives
A new Bethnal Green scheme joins a small European set of Victorian gasworks turned into homes, parks and public spaces.
There is something stubbornly useful about the Victorian gasholder. This piece looks at Regent’s View Bethnal Green, a new London development that reworks two historic canal-side frames, and then places it in a wider story about how these industrial structures are being adapted across Europe. Berkeley acquired the site after the gasholders were decommissioned, and Graham Stirk of RSHP led a masterplan that dismantled, restored and rebuilt the ironwork, including Gasholder No 2 from 1866, described here as the oldest of its kind in the world.
Inside those restored frames sit cylindrical residential buildings with up to 234 apartments each. The unusual geometry seems to have worked in the architects’ favour: bathrooms and open kitchens occupy the tighter corners, while terraces fit between broad windows. The wider scheme adds three more buildings and 1.75 acres of public landscaping. The tallest gasholder is planned with shared amenities including a rooftop bar, screening room, squash court, golf simulator and workspaces.
The article also rounds up other conversions worth knowing: Wilkinson Eyre’s King’s Cross Gasholders and Bell Phillips’s park at Gasholder No 8 in London; Vienna’s Gasometer City, reworked by Jean Nouvel, Coop Himmelb(l)au, Manfred Wehdorn and Wilhelm Holzbauer; Villa Industria in Hilversum; and the larger Bromley-by-Bow Gasworks plan, also by RSHP, which is still to come. Best for readers who enjoy seeing industrial relics turned into places people can actually use, with one London scheme launching now and others suited to a future detour.
Our summary of a story from The Spaces, published 5 October 2026. Read the original
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From The Spaces