When, in the course of your work as a journalist in the built environment, you are invited to poke your nose around a development site, it is usually because someone, somewhere, feels they have something to show off. 

Perhaps it’s a contractor, showing off the  swift and efficient progress of works on the project, or an architect flaunting the glitzy finished product. It could even be the client, proudly exhibiting the building in use. 

It is less common, however, to be invited to a site before construction has started, and rarer still to look around a scheme before a planning submission has been made. But it was in this unusual situation that Building found itself earlier this summer at Truman Brewery in east London’s iconic Brick Lane neighbourhood.