Gloucester Docks

Comprehensive regeneration of Gloucester’s historic docks, transforming redundant industrial dockyard into a thriving commercial, leisure and retail hub with over one million visitors annually. This waterfront regeneration initiative was one of Dyer’s earliest projects for British Waterways, a client for whom we have also designed a headquarters building and are now delivering the £200m+ Gloucester Quays development (with The Peel Group). The project marks the complete transformation of Gloucester’s historic docks from redundant industrial wasteland into thriving urban hub. It originates in a rigorous masterplanning exercise to integrate the 11 acre site with the city centre, opening up views towards Gloucester Cathedral. It has brought the waterway back into use as a mooring for pleasure craft.

Gloucester Docks is now an established leisure destination, with over one million visitors annually. It brings together a wide range of commercial, civic and retail uses within a safe and lively public realm. Listed Victorian warehouses have been sensitively restored and converted to new use as museums, offices, shops, bars and restaurants. The city council has had its HQ on site for a number of years. As well as extensive refurbishment, the project involved the design and delivery of a new shopping mall, Merchant’s Quay. This provided over 2,800m2 of retail floor space in a building highly respectful of the existing urban grain. One of the development’s most successful civic spaces is the National Waterways Museum. It’s housed in Llanthony Warehouse, which dates from 1873 and was the largest of the listed warehouses we were tasked with restoring as part of the project. We designed it to be flexible to meet the needs of the growing museum and are pleased that it readily accommodates a range of interactive dis5s, including a new Ecology Gallery.