News and Events

I recently met the lovely Simone of @siansahs_florist during my adventures exploring and profiling businesses and organisations based in and around Bethnal Green. Simone has a really likeable personality and strives to perfect her offer to all her customers. I myself have witnessed her craftsmanship curating pieces for clients and the attention to detail she gives this task. To learn more about her and Siansah’s Florist please do continue reading!

Your history

“Siansah’s florist is family-run business with a Colombian background, established since 1982 in the town of Bucaramanga, Columbia. We take pride in providing a floral service with a wide variety of approaches whether that is traditional or state of the art. Here at Siansah’s we hope to provide a service that is not only professional but also extremely personal. This has remained our core approach with all our customers, and has given us a unique edge enabling us to blossom over the years. Our flowers and plants are brought to you with nothing but love, freshness and exceptional craftsmanship. We’re more than happy to bring to life floral designs for any occasion such as weddings, parties and so forth. Please do come to visit us at our Bethnal Green florists and you will be welcomed by blooming flowers shining with elegance in each corner of our business premises and as always a smile!”

Your business

We cater for all types of events – celebrations, festive events and seasons. We are proud to be one of the best florists within London, with the added benefit of being located in the heart of the capital. Another awesome benefit of being based in this diverse city and rich Bethnal Green locality means we never find ourselves falling short of finding inspiration for our designs and floral arrangements.

Your passion for the area

In Bethnal Green, I find a mixture of ethnicity; it’s a good thing for humanity we can learn to get on with each other. The business sector is starting to extend with lots of new innovative shops such as the Columbia coffee shops nearby, Japanese restaurants all being a stone’s throw away from Siansah’s. I find it very welcoming that a lot of these shops are opening now. Business is improving on the high street as a result and you can now really find everything you’d need in Bethnal Green from the big Tesco supermarket to the smaller DIY and groceries stores.

Your offers

Until the end of January, I will be offering return customers 10% off their future purchases from Siansah’s Florist.

Your future

In the future I would really love to have more shops in time, possibly a chain across London with staff that complement us as a business.

You can tend to all your floral needs at Siansah’s Florist which is conveniently located at 216 Bethnal Green Road opposite the Post Office – make sure to check her out!

Bethnal Green can be a really great place to stay fit and healthy, whether that’s out and about in the local parks or by taking one of many classes in the gyms dotted around the area. We recently met with Laura who runs a weekly pilates session in the Cranbrook Community Centre, just off Roman Road every Saturday morning where you and a friend can join for just £5 each!

Your history

I come from a background of hating exercise! I had a real aversion to it, accompanied by some painful childhood memories of always being picked last for the netball team. I discovered more enjoyable fitness in my late 20s, having stopped smoking and needing an activity to help me manage both my weight and mindset, having put the cigarettes down. I’m quite the exercise cliché in that I haven’t looked back. I retrained as a fitness professional and set up my own fitness business in 2001. I’ve always felt in a great position to empathise and guide those who don’t warm to the idea of exercise initially.

Your business 

I aim to deliver fitness content that’s both effective and palatable. I try to keep routines short and low maintenance when it comes to kit and cost. When working with individuals, I ensure I listen to their limitations before issuing fitness and diet prescriptions. And when it comes to classes, my aim is to offer a dynamic environment and a thorough workout, but a session that feels to the individual like the time’s flown!

My Pilates Sculpt class is for anyone who’s ever wished they didn’t have to choose between a workout and Pilates. And for anyone who wants to strengthen their core, or top up their physio exercises, at a relatively low cost.

Your passion for the area

I’ve lived in Tower Hamlets since 1997 and worked in the Borough since 2000. It feels like it’s continually changing, evolving, whether that’s the addition of a new development on the Isle of Dogs or another independent coffee shop in Bethnal Green. I love the fitness offerings in the area too: it really does feel like there’s something for everyone, from affordable fitness classes and budget gym memberships to Europe’s largest luxury health club (Third Space)!

And I’ve been so lucky to work with Bethnal Green’s beautiful Cranbrook Community Centre and Food Garden on my classes – Janet, Eileen and Lizzie have been very supportive in helping me build this fantastic, friendly little class.

Your offers 

I try to keep my classes competitively priced, so they’re available to all. I’m currently offering my Pilates-Pal promotion – if you bring a friend, you both attend for half price (£5). I also offer concessions, and will always aim to be flexible on cost for anyone wishing to attend on a limited budget.

Your future 

My aim is to continue to build an effective, supportive and intimate exercise environment: one that encourages class participants to tick all their fitness boxes (strength, flexibility, a bit of heart health) as well as enabling them to meet other, friendly local residents on a Saturday morning!

Laura runs her Pilates Sculpt classes in the Cranbrook Community Centre on Saturday mornings from 9.30-10.30 AM. Visit Laura’s website for more details.

In the first of our Bethnal Greeners series of conversations for the new year! We are joined by local Architect and co-founder of Arboreal Architecture Tom Raymont. We recently spoke with Tom to learn more about his architectural and design practice; particularly their work constructing the Stairway to Heaven, in Bethnal Green, built on the site of the Bethnal Green tube station disaster of the Second World War.

Your history 

Arboreal Architecture is a vibrant young architecture and design practice founded in 2010 by local residents Tom Raymont and Harry Paticas. They met each other during their studies at the Architectural Association in central London and after working separately for a few years – Harry in London, Tom in Los Angeles and New York – decided to create their own studio together.

When we started working together we wanted a good name for our practice, something a bit more fun than just our surnames so we went for a walk in Victoria Park to brainstorm ideas. There, surrounded by all those incredible trees – the weeping beech is our favourite – we were inspired to use the name “arboreal”. What better inspiration could you have for a building than trees? They have such a wealth of forms, colours, textures, inventive structural systems, solar collection and shade, even plumbing! They seem to marry technical performance and beauty in a way that we humans should aspire to in what we build.

Your business

We’re an ecological architecture practice so our aim is to create buildings that help us live more sustainably. This means looking to the future and finding ways to build that are very different from our current practices that rely so much on fossil fuel energy and create huge amounts of waste and pollution. The construction industry creates 60% of the UK’s waste whereas households create 14% (according to 2014 DEFRA statistics) so there really is a lot to play for. Choosing materials carefully and finding ways to reclaim and reuse them becomes a key part of our design process.

Energy is obviously also a huge factor. We’re certified Passivhaus designers which means we use particular methods to measure how much energy our designs will use when built. It helps us to deliver very high performance buildings such as our retrofit in Clapham that won Residential Building of the Year in the CIBSE Building Performance Awards 2016. There’s a lot of “greenwash” out there, people telling you that their product or design will save the planet, so it’s really important to have standards like Passivhaus to make sure buildings really are as energy efficient as they claim.

Your passion for the area

We’re based in St. Margaret’s House on Old Ford Road and we have always felt that being an architect means actively engaging with your neighbourhood, its buildings and public spaces. Our first project was the Bethnal Green Memorial which all started when Harry heard the story about the disaster in the Second World War and sent a sketch to the East London Advertiser. They published his sketch and that put him in touch with some of the survivors and relatives of those who died in the crush on the steps on 3^rd March, 1943. When these people heard Harry’s idea they were really touched and inspired to make it happen. Many years of fundraising and hard work later… here it is beside the tube station, overlooking the same steps where the accident happened. The project has been very well received in the local community and gone on to win quite a few awards: we’re the RIBA London Project Architect of the Year in fact.

Your offers

As architects we offer a full range of design services, often to people in East London but also all over the UK and occasionally abroad. We design new buildings as well as renovating existing ones. We are particularly passionate about retrofitting existing buildings, transforming them to suit new uses whilst radically improving their energy performance. London is naturally full of old buildings that are often beautiful but also cold, draughty and terribly inefficient. They were built when shovelling coal into a fireplace in each room was considered normal! No wonder they are not as comfortable or efficient as we need them to be today. We have our work cut out to transform all our existing buildings to fit the green paradigm of today.

Your future

We’re a thriving and growing architecture practice so we are always excited by the latest projects on the drawings boards (aka computer screens). We would like to keep meeting new clients that share our ecological thinking so that we can continue to build exemplary homes, public building and spaces. It’s a fast changing world and we are keen to keep innovating so that we can all be living and working in the green buildings our planet so urgently needs. Get in touch you green Bethnal Greeners!

You can get in touch with Arboreal Architecture at their Bethnal Green studio in St. Margaret’s House, London E2 9PL or check out their Instagram @arboreal_architecture