Brick sheds and warehouses run down to a canal towpath, painted over in nearly every direction, with cut out letters spelling the area's name across one factory roof.
What Hackney Wick looks like
Brick sheds and low warehouses line Wallis Road, most of them two or three storeys with skylights running the length of the roof. Yards open off the road behind steel gates, from the wide expanse of Main Yard down to a plot barely wider than a single van. Ground floor walls are painted nearly everywhere, one layer of colour over the last.
Central Books, a four storey warehouse at 99 Wallis Road, is the tallest building on the street. Parapeted gables and blue brick cills top an engineering brick plinth. Lion Works, a former iron foundry a few doors along, is stock brick with engineering brick quoins at the corners. Most of the street dates from the 1860s to the 1910s.
On Felstead Street, Oslo House is a steel framed factory faced in red brick, with a saw tooth roof and steel windows. Cut out letters spelling Hackney Wick run along its roofline, tall enough to read from the street below.
The Lee Navigation runs along the eastern edge. Its towpath is the only open ground in the area, since there are no parks here. Narrowboats moor along the bank. , the old Olympic broadcast centre, stands across the water.
Wick Road runs west past the Independent Order of Mechanics lodge at number 335, two storeys of yellow brick with arched windows over a carved stone plaque. A weathered Victory Works sign still hangs on a building near Eastway, behind the bus stand where the single deckers turn around.
Shot in Hackney Wick
Two filmmakers made a documentary about the neighbourhood itself as the 2012 Olympics took shape next door, shot in its yards and along its streets and released in 2013. The film follows the area rather than any single address.
The Wick: Dispatches from the Isle of Wonder, 2013
Tom Metcalfe and John Rowley followed Hackney Wick's own streets and yards, describing it as a post industrial area falling under the shadow of the Olympic development next door. The film names no single address, only the area's own fabric of sheds and yards.
Digbeth's Fazeley Street runs along the Digbeth Branch Canal past converted warehouses in the same red brick and blue engineering brick, with a scatter of low rise sheds and yards behind them. Grand Union and the Custard Factory now hold artist studios in former works buildings, and a stretch of towpath by the Warwick Bar is covered in street art. Digbeth's railway viaduct is taller than anything on Wallis Road, so a tight frame along the water keeps the two from telling apart. Try searching brick canal warehouses now.
Gowanus has the same run of nineteenth century red brick factories along a working canal, with loading docks and warehouse facades on Bond Street and Union Street. Artists took over the cheap upper floors from the 1990s on, filling former factory buildings with studios and small galleries. Glass condominiums have gone up along parts of the Gowanus Canal, so a wide shot needs care to keep the new towers out of frame. Try searching red brick canal factories now.
Friedrichshain's RAW-Gelände is a former railway repair works, now red brick workshop buildings and open yards holding studios, bars and rehearsal space. Nearly every wall inside the complex is painted over as well. The site is a bounded compound rather than a through street, so a frame that includes its perimeter fence will give it away. Try searching red brick workshop yards now.
