Lying at the entrance to the Thames Gateway, the Barking Town Square development is central to the area’s regeneration. This mixed use development is being undertaken in two phases. The first focuses on refurbishing and extending Barking Central Library to create the Barking Lifelong Learning Centre (LLC), which will offer a variety of educational courses from providers such as the University of East London, Barking College and Barking Adult College. The second phase comprises the construction of 200 apartments on six floors that are located directly on top of the LLC and clustered around a central, landscaped courtyard.

Ensuring the existing building can support additional floors was a key consideration in the engineering design. The extension to the library and the apartments are built from in-situ reinforced concrete. This was achieved by supporting the residential accommodation by means of a large transfer structure, which is in turn supported by a series of reinforced concrete columns. These have been carefully threaded through the original building's existing pre-cast concrete structure and are supported on new, mini-piled foundations. The interaction of the new and existing buildings is complicated as there can be no transfer of vertical loads between the two, although the existing pre-cast concrete frame relies on the new reinforced concrete structure for lateral support.