Location, location, location

Come November, London will Have its first new large park for more than 70 years. And the 9 ha Thames Barrier Park will provide not only a new green lung for the choked-up capital, but a truly modern piece of landscape architecture that shows there can be more to parks than a few flower beds and a bit of grass.

The project was conceived in 1995 by the London Docklands Development Corporation as a focus for the regeneration of the Royal Docks at North Woolwich, a contaminated wasteland housing everything from a chemical works to an armaments factory.

A high-profile international competition was held and a masterplan by a consortium of Patel Taylor Architects, French landscape architect Groupe Signes and engineer Ove Arup & Partners was picked. It came up with a scheme to link the river to the soon-to-be-developed docks and create a setting for new private housing, using the estate agents' dictum that "location is all" to stimulate development. English Partnerships became the client for the project when the LDDC was wound up last year.

French élan

It was the architect's idea to bring on board French landscaping star Alain Provost of Groupe Signes, best known for his spectacular Parc Citroën in Paris, another industrial riverside site. Patel Taylor Architects' Pankaj Patel says he "wasn't particularly inspired by anyone in the UK. We don't really have contemporary landscape and our parks are much more manicured – the French do a more structured landscape. Landscaping is about making a series of spaces, just as architecture is about creating a series of rooms."

As the park takes shape, it is clear that the landscape is something out of the ordinary, for London at least. It has a formal structure and a dramatic scale that are more architectural than horticultural. The focal point is a 4.5 m deep "green dock" that slashes across the site, creating a sheltered microclimate for a more manicured garden. Along its floor run rippling yew hedges, loosely suggesting water. Its steep sides are held back by a geotextile wall planted with greenery. Continuing the dock imagery, concrete paths run beside it and the cast iron uprights of the surrounding rail are intended to suggest mooring posts.

The northern end of the "dock" has a dramatic water feature and sheer concrete walls up to 6 m high, banded with black slate to soften the impact. At the southern end, visitors emerge on to timber decking with a 7.5 m high timber canopy, transparent weatherproofing giving its slatted timbers an illusory lightness.

The two steel bridges that span the gash are 35 m steel tubes. Devised as a continuation of the landscape rather than as separate elements imposed on it, the bridges resemble dark lines from a distance, their features becoming evident only as one crosses, stepping first on to a metal grating, then on to the timber walkway.

"We didn't want the bridges to be a statement," explains Patel. "We wanted them to be a linear element that was structurally pure and formed part of the landscape. The view of the Thames Barrier was far more important than any of that stuff."

The land has been re-profiled to provide the optimum setting for neighbouring residential developments and to create the best views within the park. Now cleaned and capped with a capillary break layer of crushed concrete, the ground slopes down from 6 m to 1 m above the river. Running across the gradient are stripes of different types of grasses and trees. Around the edge of the park, 6 m tall boxy yew hedges (cheaper and faster to grow than trees) form a verdant skyline of towers relating to the new apartment blocks under construction on the other side.

Money well spent

Amid this architectonic landscape is one genuine building: a Louis Kahn-inspired visitors' centre that Patel describes as "half cave, half orangery". The northerly half is bare concrete; the southerly half a glass box supported by thick timber columns opening out on to timber decking that flows into the park. It will house a café and give spectacular views of the river and Thames Barrier.

As with many grand urban planning schemes, cash constraints have forced the scaling down and even jettisoning of some features. Patel says: "£7m may seem like a lot for a park, but it's been incredible value for money. The LDDC was shocked by the size of the bids people were putting in to buy neighbouring plots of land. The housebuilders are now selling flats next door for £250 000."

And to prove the green space has created a regeneration spark, the flats do not face the water as you might expect – they face the park.